


Nullified!

by HedgehogSquadGoals



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Autopsy AU, Explicit Language, IN SPACE!, M/M, Sexual Content, Violence, ZADF, ZaDr, adult dib
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28699545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HedgehogSquadGoals/pseuds/HedgehogSquadGoals
Summary: A live alien is better than a dead one! That’s Dib’s theory, anyway. When he discovers a half-dissected, somehow-still-alive alien in storage at his father’s lab, he resolves to bring it to full health and show the world that extraterrestrial life exists (and most importantly, that he's not crazy)! Though, the alien may have a few ulterior motives of his own...
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 211





	1. Urth

The alien was dead. That much, Dib knew.

He didn’t know _why_ there was an alien corpse stored unceremoniously in the corner of a supply room at his dad’s laboratory complex, but he _did_ know it was dead. The little body floated in its tank, inert and pale in purple liquid. The alien was dead, and Dib was ecstatic.

He stared at the cylindrical tank from his kitchen, biting his bottom lip with glee.

He may or may not have stolen it from the lab.

“It was just sitting there!” he babbled as he paced from the kitchen to the living room, circling the pod at a rapid clip. A floating screen followed him, displaying his sister's face, "next to a bunch of defunct equipment and some gross old mops! Can you believe it?! A real alien!”

“Uh-huh,” she replied. She had a game controller in her hands and a bored expression on her face. Dib ignored the tone. He wasn’t about to let his little sister’s disinterest ruin his find.

“I asked Dr. Simmons about it, and he said it’d been there forever. Years! I guess they did some experiments and autopsied it and then forgot all about it. How can you forget about a real alien?! I told you, Gaz! I told you they were out there! And here’s the proof! Right in front of me!”

“Gonna rub it in Dad’s face?” Gaz asked flatly.

“Uh, duh! For as long as I can remember he’s given me shit about how ‘aliens don’t exist, son. Focus on real science, like reverse-engineering beavers or creating radon-infused string cheese’, while all this time, there’s been an alien in his lab that he didn’t even know about!”

“Well, it _is_ a big building.”

“He’ll have no choice but to believe me now,” he continued, ignoring her, “the whole world will have no choice! I brought it home, I’m gonna take it down to my lab and mess around with it. See what I can find. There weren’t any autopsy notes left behind, so I’ll just have to--”

“Wait wait wait,” Gaz interrupted, and he could hear the tension in her voice, “you took it HOME with you?”

“Well, yeah. Simmons said they were thinking about trashing it because the containment chamber was taking up too much room and they needed more storage for nitroglycerin and cheese balls.”

“I cannot WAIT to see the look on your face when you get fired.”

“They’re not gonna fire me, it’s Dad’s lab! Besides, no one even knew it was there anymore. It’s doing the world, no, _the universe_ a disservice to just leave it sitting there unstudied! There was a bunch of other stuff in a box next to it, too. Some metal junk. And a mummified burrito, not sure what that’s about, but I’m gonna study it too. Might be some kind of...space burrito.”

“Okay, Dib. Have fun playing with your space trash.”

“I’m not playing, I’m—hello? Gaz?”

Hung up on mid-sentence, a usual end to his long-distance talks with Gaz. She was never one for long conversations. Or short conversations, for that matter.

He approached the tank again. It was a little hard to see, blurry and distorted among the liquid, but the view was clear enough. This was something that had not been of the earth. The small body was naked, hairless. Arms terminated into three-fingered hands, legs into three-toed feet. Two black antennae lay limp against the smooth skull. The eyes were closed, and a T-shaped incision along the chest and down the torso had been pulled together with staples.

It was disgusting. He couldn’t wait to get a better look at it.

And so, he loaded the tank and the box of alien scrap metal onto a floating dolly and began to trek into his basement lab. Being the son of the world’s foremost scientist had numerous drawbacks, but at least money and equipment access weren’t among them. He’d barely graduated college before being set up with his own state-of-the-art lab, nestled beneath an immaculate two-story house in the city. His father had done the same for Gaz when she graduated (though she opted for a game room instead of a lab), and part of Dib wondered if that was Professor Membrane’s way of getting his children to stay nearby. Not that it mattered. His dad was just a scarce in adulthood as he had been in their childhood, even though they worked in the same building.

But Gaz had been right, it _was_ a big building.

The awful thought had occurred to him that this alien corpse could be a hoax; a setup to trick the excitable young scientist who wanted to study Bigfoot and chupacabras instead of making power generators and super-toast. He wanted this to be real. He wanted to prove that he wasn’t crazy; he was a visionary! His father had turned the world of “normal science” (if you could even call it that) on its head, and Dib had vowed to do the same with _para_ normal science.

The lights of the lab buzzed into life as he descended the stairs with the dolly and led it toward what Dib called the Autopsy Corner. Not a very imaginative name, sure, but it was what it sounded like. He’d installed the equipment ages ago, and still it remained, untouched and unused. A clean, gleaming steel table. An array of sharp tools, neatly laid out.

He’d been waiting for this day.

He donned a lab coat and gloves and set about removing the corpse from its tank. As the seal was broken and circular lid pulled off, the smell of the preserving fluid filled the air; not formaldehyde, but something organic; it smelled of decaying flowers. A robot arm attached to the wall reached into the goop and lifted out the little body, laying it gently on the cold table.

Its skin was an unmistakable shade of green. Dib had to physically stop himself from doing a little jig. Instead, he pressed a little button in the wall, cleared his throat, and began.

“All right, we're recording! Doctor Dib Membrane speaking, I’ve just discovered an alien corpse in storage at my D--uh...at an...unnamed science lab and have...borrowed...it for research purposes. These are my autopsy notes. I’m sure this recording will be pretty important in the future, so lemme set the stage for you. Scene opens! We see a big, impressive lab! Bright lights! Lots of expensive equipment! And, of course, our hero scientist, clad in white; a white lab coat, not a straightjacket. That part is important. Uh, anyway, our hero scientist steps forward and begins the cursory examination! He looks important and handsome. Quiet now, as we listen to his brilliant observations! Let’s see...humanoid in shape...it seems to be about...four feet tall or so. Two antennae on the top of the head, black...almost like a bee’s or a wasp’s. The eyes…”

Dib bent forward, gently spread open the left eyelid with a gloved thumb and forefinger. A raspberry red orb stared back at him.

“Large,” Dib concluded and removed his fingers, allowing the eyelid to slide closed again, “pure red, no visible pupils. The body has suffered several lacerations and some burning...the major abnormality is an autopsy scar on the anterior of the torso. It’s been stapled together, but I’ll open it back up in a minute and see what I can find. There also seems to be some kind of...thing...on its back.”

He grasped the corpse by its shoulder and turned it face-down, noting the odd dome. It was some sort of metal, with three dark spots, one toward the top and two angled toward the bottom. It was badly dented on the bottom-left side, the spot there cracked. With his free hand, he grabbed a scalpel from the tray beside him and tapped it against the dome. It gave a metallic ring.

“Weird. There’s some kind of unit attached to the body. Reminds me of a ladybug shell. I don’t know what kind of metal it’s made of...and there seem to be some compartments within it. Let’s see if we can get into this…”

He grabbed a tool he called the crowbar. It was, of course, not really a crowbar, but it served more or less the same purpose; prying open things that were hard to pry open. Beyond the handle was a razor-thin rectangle of metal; less than the thickness of a sheet of printer paper, and a hundred times as strong as steel. He tried to slide it between where the lip of the metal met the darkened compartment. No good. It was flush.

“Incredible,” he breathed. He pressed a button on the side of the crowbar’s handle, and a small arc of electricity buzzed from the blade. He jammed it back into the barely perceptible seam.

The compartments on the dome gave a couple of little electric flickers, then began glowing a violent pink. Startled, Dib dropped the crowbar and backed off. The three spots on the thing glowed hot, made soft buzzing noises. The body it was attached to tensed and shuddered in what Dib assumed at first was a merely an electro-physical stimulus response.

Until the alien corpse moved its arm, bracing one hand against the metal table.

It pushed itself up.

Dib stared. Two red eyes stared back at him. It seemed like an eternity, their eyes locked together in the cold, sterile room, with only the slight sparking and whirring of the creature’s dome breaking the silence. Then, without so much as a warning, the alien scowled, baring pink-white teeth, and lunged at him. Dib shrieked and leapt backwards, but his impressive feat of agility was totally unnecessary. The alien’s pounce was weak, and it dropped off the table and fell with a wet ‘plop’ onto the floor.

Dib stayed frozen, eyes trained on the being before him. The alien groaned and pushed itself up onto its hands and knees...then opened its mouth and vomited up the same purple preservation fluid that it had been contained within minutes prior. The pink circles on its domed metal shell buzzed and retracted slightly, revealing the compartments within; more fluid poured out from the recesses, little rivers of purple among the pink glow. The compartment lids shuddered and clanked, continuing to open partway and close again, open and close.

“Holy shit,” Dib whispered, hazarding a cautious step forward, “you’re alive…”

The alien looked up at him miserably, its eyes narrowed in the apparently universal sign of contempt. It opened its mouth again, possibly to say something...but instead just made an awful choking sound and hacked up more fluid.

“Okay, okay! Uh...okay, um...calm down, I can help you. I think…” Dib said, though he was aware he was talking more to himself than anything. The alien seemed to be thinking the same thing, and it stared warily up at him from its prone position on the floor. Dib reached forward and the thing let out a soundless scream, scuttering backwards until its back hit the wall. Its teeth were still bared threateningly, but its eyes were wide, antennae standing straight up in an unmistakable signal of alarm.

“It’s okay!” Dib urged, “I’m not going to hurt you-I mean, I was going to cut you open-” he continued and the alien’s eyes grew wider, “but that’s when I thought you were dead! Look, you’re safe! You’re not in that lab anymore, you’re at my house. This is my place.”

It blinked at him, then swiveled its head around, taking in the surroundings. It seemed to relax a little before dropping its gaze down to its torso and the nasty T-shaped wound stapled together there. It immediately shot its head back up and glared at Dib again.

“Hey, I’m not the one who did that!” Dib insisted, holding his hands up in defense, “I uh...okay...hold on a sec. Don’t move.”

Its burning eyes never left him, and Dib hurried up the stairs. He wasn’t too worried about leaving it alone for a minute or two; he didn’t think the alien could cause much trouble even if it wanted to. Years half cut open and floating in a vat of liquid in a dark closet couldn’t have been kind to anyone, not even a creature from beyond the stars. He grabbed a towel from the linen closet and scrambled back down into the lab.

“Okay, I’m gonna clean the preservation fluid off of you, okay?” he asked, approaching slowly with the towel held in front of him like a matador’s flag. The alien just stared. When Dib knelt down and started drying it off, it raised tensed hands in an attempt to swat him away. But the effort was short-lived, its arms falling uselessly back to its sides as quickly as they had been raised. “Yeah, you probably want to save your energy. Don’t fight, I’m helping you, okay?”

It made some kind of growl deep within its throat, but, after a moment, closed its eyes and turned its head away, allowing Dib to continue. Dib could barely keep his hands from shaking as he gingerly ran the towel along the alien’s body, sopping up leftover moisture. Part of it was from the adrenaline of having a dead body wake up on the autopsy table, sure, but another part was excitement. A dead alien was good, but a live one was so much better! All those years of being called crazy, of being tossed into various asylums, having eggs thrown at his head, those days would all be over when the world saw this. A real live alien.

Once finished, he sat back on his heels, studying his work. The alien turned its head back toward him and gave him a long look. Then it snatched the towel out of his hand, wrapping it around its slender body.

“Oh, uh...are you...cold? Or you need something to wear? Um, hold on…”

He made another trip upstairs and returned with one of his t-shirts, which he handed over. A three-fingered hand snatched it from him and the alien looked down at it, frown deepening. It tossed the towel aside and, glowering at Dib the whole time, pulled the shirt over its head and down its body. It was so small that the shirt functioned more like a dress or nightshirt, but it was better than nothing.

Dib suddenly wondered if aliens wore pants.

The alien gathered a bunch of the fabric in its hands, made a big show of sniffing the shirt (with what, Dib didn’t know, since it had no visible nose), then made a disgusted face, a long, segmented tongue flapping out of its mouth in an exaggerated gag.

“Hey! It’s clean!” Dib insisted, but was answered with a snort. The creature tried to rise to its feet, but its knees wobbled dangerously under the long shirt; just when Dib was about to reach forward to steady it, the thing’s backpack-like dome whirred and two long, spindly metal legs unfurled from within, planting their sharp tips on the floor for balance.

“What the…” Dib stared in amazement as it walked a few exploratory steps with those bizarre robot appendages acting as crutches. It seemed particularly interested in the box of junk Dib had found in the closet. It rummaged through the box, throwing random pieces of metal over its shoulder. The mummified burrito narrowly avoided hitting Dib in the face. At last, it seemed to find what it was looking for; it grabbed onto something and hauled it out of the box, letting it clatter to the floor.

It looked like total garbage at first, but upon second glance, Dib could see it was some kind of robot. Tiny and more like a collection of tin cans than a mechanical servant, but that had to be what it was. He could make out two huge, blank eyes, a little mouth, spindly arms, conical legs. Whatever the case, it didn’t seem functional. Actually, it didn’t look like it ever _had_ been or ever _would_ be.

The alien gave the robot a swift kick in the head. It didn’t move. The alien grunted.

“Is that yours?” Dib nodded his head toward the robot. Two red eyes stared back at him, “okay, better question...can you even talk? Can you understand me? I had a translator around here somewhere, but I don’t-”

He was interrupted as it burst into a hacking fit, vomiting up more purple fluid. It made a gurgling noise before collapsing, stone cold unconscious on the ground. The robotic limbs retreated and the pink dome compartments closed with a screeching grind.

Dib stood there in his lab, a half-dissected alien unconscious on the floor in a puddle of chemicals, and a little broken robot laying motionless at its feet.

“Well shit,” Dib said, staring, “now what”?

* * *

“You stole an alien corpse and dragged it to your house to mess around with it, and now you’re surprised that something’s gone wrong?” Gaz asked, though her voice was as disinterested as always.

“No! I mean...well, yes. It’s not like I was expecting the thing to still be alive!”

At a loss for what to do, he had wrapped the little body in a soft blanket (its skin looked fragile, to say nothing of the various wounds) and carried it upstairs to the spare bedroom. It was a place Dib had set up if his dad or Gaz ever wanted to spend the night (of course, they didn’t). So now it was mainly used for storage, housing the collection of strange artifacts he’d picked up throughout the years. But it did still have a bed, and that was the important thing. He’d carried the alien’s junk robot upstairs too. The thing was obviously important to the alien, and he didn’t want some spaceman waking up in the middle of the night and going ballistic trying to find it.

“Uh-huh,” Gaz said, “well. What are you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know...it’s not like I can go to sleep with a real live alien in my guest bedroom. I’ll just have to stay up and...watch it.”

“Please,” Gaz scoffed, “don’t act like this is some huge sacrifice on your part. Creepily watching an unconscious alien has probably been among your top ten fantasies since you were like, five.”

“Three, but point taken. It’s exciting, Gaz! You sure you don’t wanna come over and see it? There’s that mummy burrito too, remember?”

“Pass.”

“Anywho, remember that universal translator I developed? The one that let me communicate with those mermaids?”

“No.”

“It’s broken right now, you know, the zombie antelope incident, but I’m pretty sure I can fix it up by morning. Then I’ll be able to talk to it! Do you know how incredible this is, Gaz? This’ll be the first documented time a human speaks with an alien! Imagine what we’ll learn!”

“Okay, Dib. Have fun on your date with the alien. Don’t get killed.”

Dib began to retort, but it was too late. Hung up on again. It didn’t matter. He’d use this time to fix the translator, and soon, he’d be making history.

As he headed back into the lab to fetch the translator, his daydreams led him to fanciful places. Not only would everyone realize he WASN’T crazy, they’d realize he was a genius! Just as deserving of renown as his father was. HE’D be the one to revolutionize the world, to provide a clear and concise answer to that ages-old question, ‘are we alone in the universe’?

He was mentally in the middle of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he walked back upstairs into the living room and found the alien standing there with the help of its robotic legs, the blanket still wrapped tightly against its body. It stared up at a calendar on the wall.

“Is this date correct?” it asked in flawless English. Dib stared, shocked, before looking down at his broken translator. He looked back up.

“Buh???” he asked stupidly.

“IS THIS DATE CORRECT?” it repeated in a raised voice, glaring over its shoulder and tapping at the calendar with one sharp fingertip.

“I...uh...y-yeah…?”

“Then I have been out of commission for FIFTEEN of your Urth years!” it turned, frantic, “this is unacceptable! Never has an Irken Elite gone so long without reporting back to Control! UNACCEPTABLE!”

“Okay, calm down!! Wait, what did you say you were? Irken? How do you spell that?” he’d already abandoned the translator and instead picked up a pad and pen, scribbling as the alien spoke.

“I must get into contact with them,” it said, gripping its face in a panic, “I must—“

It paused mid-sentence, eyes wide, before vomiting more preserving fluid all over the formerly clean living room floor.

“Hey!” Dib lifted his foot, narrowly avoiding the splash. The little creature’s robotic legs wobbled and gave out, and it slowly sunk to the ground, liquid dribbling down the side of its mouth. It shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around its body. Dib couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Sure, he’d been raring to cut this thing up and see what made it tick, but that’s back when he’d thought it dead. Now it was a shivering heap on his living room floor, and as much as the thought of alien guts fascinated him, he did have a goddamn heart.

“Hey,” he started, reaching out a gentle hand to touch the alien’s shoulder, “save your energy. I can help y—ow!”

The alien slapped his hand away and shot him a withering glare.

“Get your filthy ape hands away from Zim!”

“Okay, geez! Sorry! I was just trying to comfort you!”

“Ha!” it spat, “Zim needs no ‘comfort’! He is far superior to you human pig filthies, and...and…” the alien trailed off and seemed to melt even further into the floor, its (his?) sudden fervor draining away so quickly that Dib could practically see it.

“Right. Okay. You don’t need comfort, but you clearly need help. What’d you say your name was? Zim? I can help you.”

Zim gave the man a long stare, berry-red eyes screwed up in scrutiny. Finally, he gave a weary sigh and sunk further into his cocoon of a blanket.

“My PAK has been damaged. It must be fixed before I can regain full functionality.”

“Your PAK? The thing on your back? Okay, I’ve got plenty of tech here we can use to--”

“Do not insult Zim with your children’s playthings, slop-beast! Only Irken technology can repair a PAK.”

“Okay,” Dib’s sigh was edged with frustration, “that's your robot, right? We'll fix it up and _it_ can repair your backpack thing.”

Dib was surprised when the alien smiled and gave a little chuckle. He looked a lot less scary when he wasn’t all narrowed eyes and bared teeth.

“Oh yes, Gir…” he gave a fond little shake of the head, then looked back up at Dib, “he’s a top of the line model, you know. ...I’m not letting him anywhere near my PAK.”

“But you said--”

“Your words are too many!” Zim went back to scowling, struggling to lift himself up, “each second I’m spending not contacting my Tallest is a second I’m spending…not contacting my Tallest!!!”

“Your Tall-what? I don’t even-okay. Okay.”

Dib took a deep breath, a moment to focus. The alien seemed worried, frantic. More than that, it had been horrifically injured and didn’t seem to be on the path to getting better. If he wanted a live alien to show off to the world, he’d have to do something, and quick. He looked at Zim, who was glaring at Dib’s framed _'I Want To Believe_ ' poster.

“Okay. So. What do you need?”

“...the base. My base. If I can get there, my computer can help fix up both myself and Gir.”

“Okay. Do you remember where it is?”

“AN ABSURD QUESTION!” Zim shouted dramatically, looking simultaneously disgusted and offended, “of course my superior brain remembers!”

“Okay. Then I’ll take you to your base.”

“Nonsense, fleshy pig-thing,” the alien flung the blanket to the floor and began limping his way toward the door, neither his biological nor robotic legs looking like they were up for even that short trip, “I need no help, especially not from a _human_.”

The way he said the word ‘human’ was so strung with vitriol that it made Dib uneasy. But, he figured he’d be pretty pissed off too if he’d come to another planet only to be cut open and tossed in a tank.

The alien fell face-first onto the floor with a pathetic yelp, six feet away from the door. Dib sighed.

“Let me grab my coat.”


	2. Base

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments!

Dib had found himself in a lot of weird situations over the years, but driving a half-dead alien and his broken robot to their suburban home base was definitely the weirdest.

Aside from the zombie antelope incident. He still saw those horns in his nightmares.

Zim sat shotgun, the busted robot in his lap and Dib’s blanket draped over his head; a precaution in case anyone managed to spot him. It was 3 AM in the morning and pitch dark out, but a little bit of discretion wasn’t a bad thing. Dib wasn’t sure what he’d do if he got pulled over, but Zim hadn’t seemed very concerned about that particular possibility.

Dib was very concerned. He made sure to obey every traffic law he knew of.

Small talk wasn’t achieved easily. For every question asked, he got a grunt or a “stop talking!” in return. After having to deal with the alien’s sour mood for a while now, he had to admit that it gave him a little sick pleasure whenever they hit a pothole and Zim groaned and clutched his abdomen.

It turned out that Zim did have a good memory, or, at the very least, remembered where his home base was. He instructed Dib through the city and into the outlying suburbs, screaming commands whenever there was a highway to get on or a turn to take. If Zim had something approximate to lungs, they definitely hadn’t been removed during the autopsy.

“My name is Dib, by the way,” Dib offered halfway into their drive.

“I don’t care,” Zim answered flatly.

“Yeah," Dib grumbled, "I figured. Sooo...what happened? How’d you get captured?”

Zim crossed his arms and leaned against the car door. In the reflection of the window, Dib saw him peering out into the darkness as light posts and street signs whipped by.

“...I don’t remember.”

“Do you really not remember,” he asked, doubtful, “or are you just being difficult?”

“You only perceive Zim as difficult because your inferior brain cannot handle his magnificence!” Zim answered haughtily. There was a moment of silence before he continued, more earnestly, “I really don’t remember. There was a bright light...Gir was there. He probably wasn’t much help. And Minimoose…”

“...Mini...moose…?”

“Yes,” Zim sighed and sunk down into his seat before twisting to look at Dib, “you didn’t happen to see a tiny purple moose in the lab where you found me, did you?”

“I would...definitely remember seeing a tiny purple moose. So...no.”

“Oh, Minimoose…” Zim lamented, “my greatest creation! His excellence nearly rivals my own. NEARLY.”

“Why a moose?”

“Anywho, finding him will have to wait until later. The top priority is contacting my Tallest. Then fixing my PAK, my body...and then Gir. I guess.”

“Shouldn’t you fix your PAK first…?” Dib glanced over at him in confusion.

“No!” he responded vehemently, “I mustn’t wait a second longer than necessary to contact my Tallest. If it’s been fifteen Urth years...they’ll be worried sick. Even worse, they may have had me Nullified! With tears in their eyes, I’m sure.”

“Nullified?”

“Yes,” Zim said, closing his eyes and leaning back against the seat. He clutched the blanket to his chest and continued, “when an Irken goes no-contact for a long period of time, and no body is found, no PAK information recovered...they’re Nullified. Marked missing and thought dead. Nulls are usually assumed to have been vaporized, since eh...well, space can be dangerous. Especially if you go into the part of space that vaporizes stuff. ...but there have been some Nulls found alive. They are not allowed to rejoin Irken society.”

“What?” Dib gave an incredulous chuckle, “just because you don’t talk to your leaders for a few years, you can be outcast?”

“Killed,” Zim corrected, and his matter-of-fact tone sent a shiver down Dib’s spine, “it is always assumed a live Null has been working with the enemy. Precautions must be taken.”

“And who exactly is...the enemy…?” he asked cautiously.

Zim just grunted. He didn’t seem interested in, or maybe wasn’t capable of, carrying on the conversation any longer. Dib was beginning to second-guess his recent actions. He was glad he’d thrown his messenger bag into the back of the car before starting off on this little jaunt. It contained his Swollen Eyeball briefcase-laptop, among other things. He had a feeling he might need it.

They finally got to their destination, a weird teal-green house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Dib didn’t doubt it at all when Zim told him this was the place. It was bizarre. Besides that, the house definitely looked like no one had been there in fifteen years; the grass grew high in the yard, with ivy crawling up the walls. On the sides of the building drooped half-collapsed cables, some curled in the grass like great dead snakes. A satellite dish, formerly positioned on the roof, had crashed onto the front lawn, decimating several decorative gnomes. Dib thought that Zim would be upset at seeing his home in such a state of disarray, but the alien seemed pretty pleased.

“Good!” he exclaimed as he opened the car door and crawled out, lugging the broken robot with him, “still intact after all these years. An amazing base, built by an amazing Ziiim. Come, human pig-slave.”

“Wait wait wait,” Dib paused in the middle of grabbing his bag, “slave? Since when am I your slave?!”

“You offered to help me,” Zim stared blankly at him from over the car hood, wearing Dib’s blanket like a cloak.

“Yeah!” Dib slammed the door and glared down at him, “I offered to HELP you! Not be your slave! There’s a difference-a big difference!”

“SEMANTICS!” Zim shouted dramatically, “come! The longer we stay out in the open, the more chance I have of being captured! ...eh...again!”

“Oh my god,” Dib whispered under his breath, reluctantly following behind the limping alien.

“Yes,” Zim nodded sagely, “your god indeed.”

They walked up the path, sidestepping detritus, and stopped at the doorstep. Zim waited. Dib looked down at him. Zim waited some more. Dib cleared his throat. Still, Zim waited.

“Okay,” Dib finally said, “are you gonna open the door, or…?”

“That’s strange…” Zim brought a hand to his chin, staring up the entryway, “usually the house will sense my presence and open it for me…”

“It’s been a long time, man,” Dib said, nudging a dead pigeon off the walkway, “that mechanism might not be functional anymore.”

“How DARE you insult Zim’s work!”

“I’m just saying-”

But before he could finish, Zim turned his attention back to the door. He took the robot by the legs, lifting it high into the air before slamming it into the door like a metal baseball bat. The door splintered off its hinges with a loud crack, falling heavily into the house. Zim dropped the robot and stormed over the threshold.

Dib paused, stared at the robot’s sad little body, then followed. He was wary, but excited. An alien’s home base! This was something he’d dreamed of for years! How cool was that?!

...well, it probably would have been more cool had the place not been falling apart. It was a wreck. Cables hung low from the ceiling, some completely detached, draping across a moldy couch, a cracked television, a half-broken table. Plant life grew through cracks in the walls. Worst of all, it was flooded, the floor covered by half an inch or so of standing water. Dib stepped off the broken door and further into the house, running his hand along one of the downed cables. It hadn’t rusted, even after all this time, and seemed to be made of the same metal as what Zim called his PAK. He looked over his shoulder at the alien, prepared to ask, but stopped when he saw the look on Zim’s face.

He was still standing on the fallen doorway, staring down past his bare feet at the still water before him, Dib’s blanket still clutched around his body. His eyes were wide and frightened. After a long moment of staring and silence, he threw his head up toward the ceiling.

“Computer! Drain the water.”

A distorted mechanical chirp was the only answer he got.

“Com-PUTUURRR!” Zim demanded again, raising a shaking fist. Dib noticed he liked to do that a lot, “DRAIN THIS WATER IMMEDIATELY! That is a command from your master, ZIM!”

Nothing but another broken warble.

They stood there for a moment, Dib looking at Zim and Zim looking expectantly up at the ceiling. Finally, Zim let out a drained moan and sank to his knees, pulling the blanket down over his face.

“You know, you’d save a lot more energy if you weren’t screaming and gesturing all the time,” Dib pointed out, “how do we fix your computer?”

“...the AI brain is underneath the house,” came Zim’s voice from under the UFO-pattered fabric.

“Okay...then show me the stairs or elevator or whatever, we can-”

“You don’t understand, human,” he lifted the blanket and shot him a nasty glare, “the computer’s brain is UNDERNEATH the house. If this floor is flooded, then the entire base below is filled with water! The computer can’t drain the water without being fixed, and I can’t fix the computer because it’s trapped in the water that it can’t drain!”

Dib gave a thoughtful pause, then a shrug.

“Scuba suit?”

“...if my PAK was fully functional, I would have access to something similar to your ‘scoo-ba’ suit, yes. But it’s not.”

“...you sure you don’t want to use my tech to repair your-”

“That’s it!!” Zim gasped, eyes growing round, “the satellite!”

“I didn’t say anything about a-”

“I’ll get to the satellite, it should have the resources I need to repair my PAK and begin healing my body! Eh...and fix Gir, or whatever.”

“You have a satellite…? Orbiting the Earth…?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Zim asked, genuinely puzzled. Dib just opened his mouth, closed it again, and shook his head.

“So how the hell do you plan to get up to this satellite? Do you—OH. MY GOD. Do you have a spaceship?!” he sloshed excitedly through the water toward Zim, who recoiled in fear, “where is it!? How does it work?? How big is it? Can it travel at warp speed?!”

“Of course I have a spaceship,” Zim sneered, scooting back a little, “how do you think I got here?”

“Where is it?!” Dib asked, too excited to be shaken by the alien’s open hostility.

Zim pointed up.

It took Dib a minute to process what he meant.

“What? No way! It’s in your attic?” a quick nod confirmed, and Dib gaped, “it’s gotta be tiny!”

“I assure you,” Zim growled, “it is a standard, Irken-sized ship. Not tiny. Standard!”

Dib crossed his arms.

“And how exactly do you get to this ship?”

“Eh...well, usually I have the computer take me up to that level...but...uh…” Zim looked up at the ceiling, then at the cables. He finally stood and reached forward (still not stepping off the broken door and into the water, Dib noted), grabbed one of the downed cables, and gave it an experimental tug. A bundle of metal cords crashed down to the floor, along with a good chunk of ceiling and the eponymous spaceship. Dib leapt out of the way, narrowly avoiding being squished by the bulbous purple craft. 

"What the fuck, man?! You could have killed me!”

“Haha, yes!! I AM amazing, thank you for saying so!” Zim raised both fists in triumph, then immediately doubled over, hands to his tummy, “so…so very amazing…”

Dib stood, wringing water out of his coat as he surveyed the craft. It looked to be in okay shape, but it was small; definitely too small to comfortably fit an adult human. Still, he couldn’t just let the alien LEAVE...he still needed evidence! Photographs! Video! Tissue samples! Maybe he could even schedule a press conference and have Zim speak? Would the Irken be willing to reveal the existence of alien life? Maybe! The possibilities were endless.

But in order for the possibilities to _remain_ endless, Dib needed to stay with the alien. He wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip through his fingers.

Not like the zombie antelope incident.

Zim had already raised the hatch of the spaceship and thrown his useless, blank-eyed robot into the back. He was stepping off the door and into the cockpit when Dib rushed forward.

“Wait!” he yelled, pulling his messenger bag onto his shoulder, “I’m coming with you!”

“That won’t be necessary, Dennis,” Zim said offhandedly, waving him away, “your offer to be my lifelong slave was generous, but Zim does not need you any longer.”

“It’s Dib. And you’re still hurt. Look at you, you can barely stand. You might need someone around to help...especially if you start to feel worse. And uh...besides! You still have my blanket. And you’re wearing my shirt! I want those back.”

Zim seemed to consider, then gave an unhappy grimace.

“Very well, Dib-beast. You may continue being Zim’s slave. Hurry up and get in here.”

“Yes!” Dib practically squealed with joy. He climbed into the narrow area behind the pilot seat, pushing the robot corpse aside to make room. He ended up sitting with his knees nearly level with his face. It was a _very_ tight fit; even tighter when Zim closed the hatch. The top of Dib’s head pressed uncomfortably against the rounded glass panel.

“Try not to vomit,” Zim said.

“Excuse me? That’s a big ask from someone who threw up all over my house a few hours agoaaAAUUUGGHH!!!”

The craft shot through the demolished ceiling, burst through the roof, and began its rapid ascent straight up into the stratosphere. Dib could feel the G-forces crushing his body against cold metal.

“At least the Voot Runner is working,” Zim said, occupied with the dashboard’s touchscreen controls, “mechanically, at least. It looks like a lot of its features are offline. Another thing to fix.”

Zim continued rambling, his voice barely registering over the pressure in Dib’s eardrums.

He was extremely uncomfortable, on the edge of pained, but as the craft pulled up through the clouds, his discomfort eased off and gave way to wonder. Out of the domed clear hatch of the cockpit, he watched as they climbed higher and higher; he could see the night sky give way to a pearly azure glow, the sun rising above the curve of the planet he called home. Before he knew it, the Earth was a just a large orb below him, a bright blue marble. He saw vast networks of golden lights blazing from the half of the planet that was still in the shadow of night. He saw the immense, unknowable expanses of the ocean, the continents giant islands in its midst. He saw the great white spiral of a hurricane forming in the Atlantic.

It was gorgeous, and it was overwhelming. Everything he knew, everything he loved, was on that brilliant blue ball spinning in a sea of blackness.

Only Zim’s panicked gasp managed to tear his attention away from the spectacle. The alien had his hands palm-down on the control panel, staring as the satellite in their view came closer and closer.

It was a huge space station, at least eight times larger than the ISS, and had probably been very impressive at one point. But time had obviously taken its toll on the structure. It looked as if at least half of it had been obliterated; the rest had taken heavy damage, huge dents peppering its dark gray hull. A pink spherical section had been torn away from the main complex, kept from floating off into space only by a comparatively tiny string of cables.

“My station!” Zim moaned, horrified, “what happened?!”

“Asteroids, maybe…?” Dib leaned forward and peered out the cockpit window, “they pass pretty close to Earth. That’s why the moon has so many craters.”

Zim groaned and flew them around the damaged station, inspecting it.

“The hangar is still intact,” he grumbled, “if the station’s computer is functional, I might be able to access it from in there.”

“Am I going to be able to breathe in this space station?” Dib asked.

“You should have asked that before getting into my ship,” was the only answer Zim gave, and it made Dib a little nervous.

He very much hoped he’d be able to breathe.

Zim flew them toward the back of the half-crescent shaped station, through a small port entrance that led into the brightly-lit interior. The port didn’t have a door, but Dib guessed there was some kind of force field keeping a consistent atmosphere and gravity within. Zim landed the ship and opened the hatch, and sure enough, Dib’s guess had been correct. He was able to breathe, and that was always nice.

He stood and stretched as Zim dragged himself out of the ship with the help of his robotic spider legs. Dib felt his back crack and wondered vaguely if he was getting too old to be cramming himself into chupacabra dens or ghost boxes or alien spaceships, but he quickly let go of that thought as he studied the environment around him.

The hangar was expansive, with a clear view of the Earth visible through the force field port window. Odd cables and tubes lined the walls. A couple of triangular craft were stored in the corner.

But the thing that got his attention was a docked spacecraft; much larger than the one Zim had flown them in with. It kept the same design elements; reds and purples, rounded curves, with a large black insignia of an alien face on its side, something Dib assumed was the mark of Zim’s people. It was longer than it was wide, with its bow a curve ending in a sharply downturned crescent. It sat, large and imposing, in the hangar, resting on three spike-sharp mechanical feet; two in the back and one up front.

Dib had been so taken with the ship that he had barely noticed Zim banging on an access panel at the back of the room. By the time Dib shifted his attention, the alien had been at it for a while and had worn himself out.

“It’s no use,” he panted, pressing his back to the wall and sliding down onto the floor, shaking his head wearily, “the computer isn’t responding, and this was the only section that hasn’t been crushed in on itself.”

“You can’t access the computer through here?”

“Not if the central control has been destroyed. No wonder the computer aboard the Voot Runner wasn’t responding. With the house brain AND the station brain down, the network has been severed.”

“What about those ships?” Dib gestured.

“The small ones are just escape pods. And the computer aboard the Vyyer will be just as nonfunctional as the one aboard the Voot, they share the same network. ...there is only one solution. I didn’t want it to come to this. Having been away for so long, and now…”

“Come to what?”

“So many years, wasted!” Zim lamented, “so many potential moments of amazing Zim amazingness, lost…”

“Come to what, Zim?”

“But I’m not giving up. No! This won’t be a retreat. It will be a...eh...trip. A tactical trip.”

“Zim!” Dib shouted, throwing his hands up into the air, “come ON, man! What are you talking about?”

Zim finally turned toward the human, silent for a moment before speaking.

“...we must make the trip into Irken-occupied space. One of our planets will have everything I need to fix myself and Gir. And more importantly, contact the Tallest.”

“Wha-huh? Wait, ‘ _we_ ’?” Dib asked, eyebrows arched.

“Yes. Did you not pledge to be my slave?”

“No!” Dib cried, “I did not! I said I would HELP you!”

“Yes, exactly,” Zim said, apparently not understanding how those two things could possibly be any different.

Dib thought he was going to go crazy. The alien was not only incredibly frustrating, he had a nasty mean streak. Dib knew that from spending a mere few hours with him. But, he was an _alien_ , and one Dib still planned on showing the world. Besides, a trip into space...now that was tempting. It was only something he’d been dreaming of since he could form sentient thoughts.

“...how long would this trip take.”

“From the edge of Irken-occupied space to Urth is about...four of your Urth months.”

“Four months?! So eight months total? I can’t be away for that long! I have a job! I have a family! And...some friends, definitely! I definitely have some friends who care about me, somewhere!”

“You begged to be my slave, and now you’re backing out!?” Zim asked, insulted, antennae pressed flat against his head. Dib was very close to ripping out his own hair in frustration.

“No! I-god. Okay. Okay. Do you have like...provisions? Food and water? I don’t know about you, but I kind of need those things to live.”

“Urth-pig,” Zim sighed as if Dib’s very existence was physically taxing, “the Vyyer is stocked with all those things. It’s made for long-distance trips. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Oh my god. Ugh...are you...you are planning on coming back to Earth, right?”

“Of course,” Zim responded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. There was a sudden steely determination in those strange, tired eyes.

Dib sighed. He knew it was no use pretending to argue with himself. He had been in all the way since the very beginning.

“I’m with you.”


	3. The Vyyer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For IZ art, general nonsense, and possibly some sketches from this fic, you can visit me on tumblr under the name Treel. As always, thank you so much for your kudos and comments!

As Zim prepared the ship for their pilgrimage (moaning dramatically all the while), Dib set up his laptop on a table stretched out against one of the hangar’s walls. He wasn’t totally sure if its connection could make it down to Earth, but he thought he’d at least try.

To his relief, it worked.

The first thing he did was send an e-mail to the lab, explaining that he’d been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and would be leaving town immediately for the next eight to ten months. He wasn’t too worried about not having a job to return to; nepotism had its perks, after all. And even if his father’s lab didn’t want to keep him on, he had plenty in savings. He’d patented a few inventions of his own, completed a couple freelance development projects. It wasn’t all his dad’s money, something he reminded himself of when he was feeling small and inadequate.

He reminded himself of it a lot.

Next, he called his sister. According to his watch, it was 7 AM back home, the time when Gaz would just be going to bed after streaming all night. Sure enough, when she answered, the image flickering on the screen showed her clad in pixel-patterned pajamas. She looked pissed off, as usual.

But, she had answered. She always answered, and that didn’t go unnoticed by Dib. Maybe somewhere in that dark little heart, she did care.

“Let me guess,” she raised an eyebrow, “the alien laid eggs in your head and now you’re gonna be a father. Congratulations, Dad.”

“What? No! Besides, he’s a male alien.”

“Mom, then.”

“Gaz, come on! This is important. The alien, he uh...I mean, I know this sounds insane-”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet!”

“If it’s coming from you, it’s going to be insane.”

“Ugh...okay. Listen. The alien needs my help. We’re up in his space station right now-see?” he held the laptop over his head, turning in a circle so Gaz could get a full 360 degree view, “isn’t that cool?”

“Looks fake,” Gaz grunted. Dib rolled his eyes and set the laptop back down.

“Well, it’s not. Anyway, he isn’t recovering from the dissection, and it looks like the only thing that can help him is a trip into space. I’m going with him to see his people, Gaz.”

“Okay.”

“...the trip there is going to take four months. Then another four months back. Probably some stops in between.”

“Sure.”

“...and maybe I’ll stay for a little bit, you know, study the aliens and their culture, pick up some ideas for new tech…”

“Why not.”

“...maybe I won’t even come back at all! Maybe I’ll live among them! I can teach them all about Earth stuff like cappuccinos and uh...dubstep.”

“You do you, man.”

“Gaz,” Dib huffed, “come ON! Do you not care at all that I’m leaving to go into uncharted space?! What if I never return?! What if I get into a spaceship crash or, or get eaten by asteroid worms?!”

“I don’t think you’re going to get into a spaceship crash _or_ get eaten by asteroid worms, because I don’t think you’re really going into space. I’m sure I’ll see you next week at Monthly Family Dinner, and you can make up all sorts of excuses why you’re still on Earth.”

Dib closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. It shouldn’t have been surprising. This had been his life. No one had ever believed him, no matter how many fairies he’d caught or lake monsters he’d dredged up. They were all too short-sighted to see it. Even Gaz, who had literally befriended and taken selfies with Bigfeets, rarely believed him. And when she did believe him, she still didn’t care.

It was a fact of life. It was annoying.

But mostly, it hurt.

“All right, Gaz,” he said, defeated, and looked into the screen. One long look at his angry little sister and her dark eyes, her purple hair, her mouth set in a perpetual frown. He didn’t know if he’d see her again, “all right. Take care of yourself.”

“Kay,” was all Gaz said, and the monitor went blank.

Dib stared at his own reflection in the black screen for a long few seconds, only Zim’s distant groans breaking the silence. After a moment, he set up another call. It went straight to a graphic featuring his father’s face. An automated recording played.

“Professor Membrane is busy being amazing at the moment! Please leave your message at the beep!”

_BEEP_

“...hey, Dad,” Dib started, ignoring a crash in the background and Zim’s melodramatic cry, “it’s Dib. I uh...I sent a message to the lab already, so they’ll know the details, but um...I’m leaving for a while. Hopefully I’ll be back before the year’s out. Sorry for ditching work, but this is important. I might never get an opportunity like this again. Talk to Gaz if you wanna know more, I guess. I’ll miss you guys. ...stay safe, okay?”

He paused, not knowing what else to say. And before long, a second beep signaled the end of the recording.

He sat in a strange alien chair in a strange alien hangar, staring at his laptop. Finally, he closed it and slid it back into his bag.

‘I love you’s’ didn’t come easily to the Membranes. He didn’t think he had ever heard it, ever said it. He _knew_ his Dad and Gaz loved him, and of course, he loved them too...but it was always unspoken. Some kind of pointless taboo in a small family too smart and too preoccupied for their own good.

And though he was well into adulthood, there were times when he still felt like a lonely little boy who just wanted to hear those words.

‘I believe you’ would be good too. 

Zim cleared his throat loudly behind Dib, bringing an abrupt end to his contemplation. He turned to look. Zim had changed clothes, out of Dib’s old shirt and into something decidedly more suited to a little green spaceman. A striped tunic in a pinkish-red color that nearly perfectly matched his eyes, made of a material that gave off a slight sheen in the light. Its collar and shoulders were light pink, pointed. Black gloves, black boots.

And, Dib noted, pants too.

“Are you quite done, slave?” Zim asked, arms crossed over his lithe chest. The change in outfit had apparently perked him up; he looked a little more lively, his eyes shone a little brighter. But his posture was stuck in a tired slump, and he could still only stand with help from those PAK legs. In the harsh light of the hangar, Dib noticed there was a long cut on the left side of his head, just below the antenna. It looked dark and angry, struggling to heal.

“I really wish you’d get it through your thick head that I’m not your slave,” Dib stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder, “I’m here to _help_ you, not serve you.”

“Those are the same thing!” Zim insisted.

“No, they really aren’t!”

“If my PAK were working properly, I would have your brain checked for parasites,” Zim turned and marched toward the ship, “because you’re obviously confused.”

Dib took a deep breath, clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and wondered if he was making the right decision.

* * *

The Vyyer was an impressive ship, though Dib realized he was predisposed to find any kind of alien craft impressive. It was blessedly much bigger than the Voot Runner and solidly built, with practically seamless panels of thick, interconnecting metal. The reds, pinks and purples of the exterior continued into the interior, and though a little visually overwhelming at first, he quickly got used to it.

The amidships stretched from the front to the back of the vessel, with four rooms radiating outward; two port and two starboard. One room was a privy, which Dib found surprising. It hadn’t occurred to him that aliens would need use of a restroom. When asked about it, Zim had waved him off and said it was there _“just in case”_.

Dib had no idea what that meant and any further attempt to ask was met with an object being thrown at his head.

The second room was used for storage, though the walls of the ship contained storage hatches of their own. Just as Zim had said, it was well-stocked with food and water.

Well, more accurately, it was well-stocked with snacks and juice. There didn’t seem to be any _actual_ substantial food on the ship, aside from a pallet full of tubes labeled ‘nutritional paste’. Zim assured him that it was all, snacks, juice and paste, safe for human consumption. Dib had held off for a day or two out of fear, but after his thirst became too great, he’d grabbed a box of juice with a happy alien face on it and, in big letters, the word **SUCK**.

So, he sucked. And it wasn’t bad! Fruity, sugary, with bits of jelly-like pulp (he didn’t want think too much about what that was). It had not only sated his thirst and given him a nice burst of energy, it also hadn’t killed him.

The third room was a small workshop, filled with all sorts of bizarre tools, most of them unnervingly sinister-looking. Zim had stored his busted robot here, laid out on a little table. Every now and then, Zim would tinker with it, trying to bring it back to life, before the effort became too much and he’d sag, exhausted, to the floor. Dib was ‘forbidden’ from this room, though with the ship’s computer broken and his own body not faring much better, Zim didn’t really have much of a way to keep him out.

Then there was the stateroom, the closest thing Dib could find to a bedroom. It contained a comfortable pink couch ( _“the most comfortable in the universe”_ , Zim had bragged _, “made by Vortians. Filthy little beasts.”_ ) set against an equally pink metal wall, with the window above giving a view into the black reaches of space. There were a couple of pillows, more decorative than functional. They were fuzzy, shaped like googly-eyed alien creatures, and, Dib had to admit, pretty cute. They reminded him of the weird little stuffed animals Gaz would collect when they were younger.

Somehow, Dib didn’t think that the adorably fluffy pillows had been Zim’s idea, and wondered who they really belonged to.

The stateroom was where Dib spent his nights, or at least, what nights would be back on his part of Earth. He had a theory about ‘space madness’ brought on by a lack of day and night cycles, and wasn’t too keen to test it out on himself. The couch was large and indeed, very comfortable, though Dib doubted its validity as 'the most comfortable in the universe'. With the pillows and the UFO blanket Zim had dragged from Dib’s house, he was able to get some surprisingly good sleep.

The cockpit itself sat on a dais at the bow of the ship. A long, clear pane stretched above the dashboard, giving an unobstructed view into the star-dotted sea before them. There was one pilot seat and a couple of secondary seats behind. The instrument panel was huge and cluttered with all sorts of buttons, screens, levers, knobs. Nearly every control was adorned with either a smiley face, a frowny face, or letters of a strange alien alphabet. The same letters scrolled lazily by on the bottoms or tops of various screens, a pleasant shade of pink.

There was plenty of time to explore. It was going to be a long trip. Dib took pictures, took notes, documented it all, describing every little detail he could think of. From the technical aspects like gravity control ( _"looks like it utilizes some kind of electro-magnetic field”_ ) to more mundane things like the smell aboard the ship ( _“nachos and fruit punch”_ ). He wasn’t about to get caught with no proof that he’d been aboard an alien spacecraft.

Much like during the car ride back on Earth, Zim was difficult to strike up conversation with. He was either in too bad a mood, too much pain, or too tired to talk; most of the time, it was all three. When he _did_ answer Dib’s questions, it was with an air of a babysitter dealing with a troublesome toddler.

Dib had taken to sitting behind the pilot’s seat, watching Zim as he made slight course adjustments, read ship loadouts, studied star maps. The Irken had obviously been annoyed by Dib’s presence at first, but grew more tolerant as the days passed; as long as Dib didn’t talk.

Unfortunately, Dib liked to talk.

And really, so did Zim, when he had the energy for it.

“So,” Dib said from the passenger seat, lazily flicking through a star projection, “what were you doing on Earth, anyway?”

“That’s really none of your business,” Zim answered airily. He’d rolled up his sleeve, studying an unhealed cut that ran down his forearm.

“My planet, my business.”

“I was not aware you owned the Urth,” Zim shot back. Dib rolled his eyes.

“It’s been three weeks now. Are you ever gonna tell me where we’re actually headed?”

“Irken-occupied space,” Zim said gruffly, antennae plastered flat against his head in annoyance. Zim didn’t keep his emotions to himself, but even if he did, it would have been easy tell how he was feeling based on the position of those antennae at any given moment.

Honestly, it was kind of cute.

“Yeah, I know that. Are we going to your home planet?”

“No. That would take an additional month to get to. I’ve set the Vyyer's course for Outpostia. It’s at the very edge of Irken space. The colony there will have everything I need.”

“Outpostia,” Dib said flatly, “really.”

“Yes,” Zim affirmed, glancing back at Dib with one eye narrowed.

“That’s kind of a stupid name, don’t you think?”

“YOU’RE A STUPID NAME! How DARE you question the naming capabilities of the mighty Irken Empire! We are a….we are a…” Zim trailed off, loud proclamations slurring their way into quiet muttering. His eyelids fluttered and his head drooped. He didn’t look good.

“Hey...why don’t you show me the controls so you can get some sleep?”

The suggestion offended Zim enough to rouse him back to life. He pushed the chair around with the help of a robotic spider limb, turning to face Dib.

“Irkens do not need sleep. My PAK-”

“Is damaged,” Dib reminded him. Zim peered back angrily, top teeth biting hard at his lower lip.

“...anyway, it’s not as if a HUMAN could understand how to pilot a MIGHTY Irken machine such as the Vyyer. Your underdeveloped mind-”

“This is how you set the course, using these keypads to choose coordinates. Alternatively, you can pick a destination on the star map. The yoke controls the twin thrust engines...that’s for emergency stop, those are forward thrusts for reverse...and this one is the hyperdrive. Oh, sorry. ‘Scary-Fast Drive’. Am I right?”

Zim’s glower could have melted steel, but it gave Dib everything he needed to know he was correct.

“So? Let me take control for a while. It’s not like I’ll even need to do anything, it’s on autopilot and you’ve already set course.”

Zim continued fixing him with a raspberry red glare. Finally, he groaned and slumped back in his seat.

“Very well. Perhaps you are not quite as stupid as the rest of your brethren. They are…” he paused, looking for the word.

“Idiots,” Dib answered. Zim looked at him, eyes wide, antennae perked in surprise. Dib laughed a little and shrugged, “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve been living with them for almost 30 years, you know? Most people are brainless morons.”

Zim still stared, the expression on his face somewhere between aghast and amazed.

“...you admit that your own people are brain-dead stink-beasts???”

“Well…I wouldn’t go _that_ far, but most of them _are_ pretty dumb. And a few of them do stink, yeah.”

The alien cocked his head to the side, antennae raised thoughtfully.

“...you are not like the rest of your kind, Dib-slave.”

“You’ve got to stop that,” Dib sighed, “I’m not your slave. I’m your...friend. We’re friends.”

“We are NOT friends. Irkens do not have...friends. We are not friends.”

“Okay, you said that twice, so that’s a little weird. Look, you’re hurt and you’re not getting any better. As much as you might not wanna admit it, you need someone to look out for you for a while. That’s what friends do.”

Truthfully, Dib didn’t have much expertise in that particular area, but he assumed that was _probably_ what friends did.

“...fine,” Zim said. Whether he was conceding because he knew he needed help, or simply because he was too tired to argue, Dib didn’t know. But it was a step in the right direction.

“So what do I do if we get pulled over by space cops?” Dib asked jokingly.

“Plasma cannon controls are right there,” Zim pointed.

Dib laughed nervously, looking into Zim’s face for any sign that he was kidding. 

His sour expression remained.

“...wait, are you seri-”

“DO NOT try to alter our course. If something goes wrong, wake me.”

“All right…” Dib shrugged, “whatever you say.”

Zim scowled, slid out of his chair, and hobbled off the dais toward the stateroom.

Handing over control was clearly something the small alien struggled with. Dib could relate. So many years of going it alone, no one believing him, no one having his back...yeah. He’d become accustomed to walking his own path and being in control of whatever that meant, as lonely as it was.

He was starting to think that he and Zim might have more in common than either of them knew.

* * *

As much as Dib had always dreamed of being aboard an alien spacecraft flying through the stars, he had to admit, it could get a little monotonous. He wished he’d been able to grab a few more things from back home, maybe the Game Slave his sister had gotten him, or a stack of unread books or something. But it was what it was, and he was stuck in deep space aboard an alien ship with not much in the way of entertainment.

By Dib’s watch, Zim had retreated to the stateroom nearly ten hours previously and still hadn’t emerged. He really hoped Zim was still alive. The terrifying thought came to him…what if Zim died here? Could he be revived again with a shock to his PAK, just as before? Or would he be well and truly gone, with Dib stuck alone with an alien corpse, hurtling toward a planet unknown to him?

Dib was smart, and he’d picked up enough of the Vyyer’s controls that he might be able to make it home if he had to...if he could tell where home _was_. The ship’s star map was expansive, and after a while, all star systems started to look the same. With the ship’s computer mostly offline, there was no telling if he’d be able to single out the Earth.

It would figure that after a lifetime of feeling alone, Dib would end up literally _being_ alone in the vast nothingness of space.

That thought was not comforting.

He stretched, giving one last look out the forward window before stepping off the dais. He made his way down the amidships and peeked into the stateroom. Zim was curled up on the couch, blanket clutched tightly around his body. He was fast asleep.

Or dead.

Dib crept closer and knelt down on the floor beside the couch. He could make out a slight rise and fall in Zim’s chest, and sighed in relief. The Irken was breathing. With what sort of respiratory system, Dib didn’t know, but at least he was still alive.

Hopefully it would stay that way. The thought of being stuck in outer space alone was bad, but the thought of losing a real alien, living proof that he wasn’t crazy, was somehow worse.

He sat, studying the Irken’s features in a way he hadn’t been able to since he’d first fished Zim’s body out of that containment tank. His skin was pale; whether naturally that shade, or a symptom of his current condition, Dib didn’t know. He got a better look at the gash below Zim’s left antenna. It wrapped around to the back of his head, stitched back together by some steady-handed scientist.

He wondered who had captured Zim, who had dissected him. The alien was no closer to remembering than he had been weeks earlier, and his robot was still very out of commission.

Those answers would have to wait.

He could see Zim’s eyelashes now- or lack of eyelashes, as it were. Instead of hair, his eyes were framed by thin sheets of something like semi-translucent black cartilage, thicker on the top lid and thinner on the bottom. There was a slight bump where a nose would be on a human, curving down into thin, pale lips and a small chin. His antennae twitched as he slept, black and smooth, with barely perceptible segments. Dib felt the urge to touch them, but he didn’t. He had manners.

Well, he had _some_ manners. It probably wasn’t very polite to stare at someone while they were sleeping.

He had considered grabbing his camera and taking some photos. That way, if things _did_ go south, at least he’d have...something. It _definitely_ wasn’t polite to take pictures of someone while they were sleeping, but this...this would be for science! Documentation! And sure, it would be a little creepy, but _science_ could be a little creepy.

The zombie antelope crossed his mind again.

Thoughts of sharp hooves and yellow eyes were interrupted as a sudden jolt rocked the entire ship. Caught off balance, Dib fell to his side, glasses skidding across the floor. One of Zim’s antennas fluttered slightly, but he still slept. A steady beep began emanating from the cockpit. Dib grabbed his glasses and scrambled toward the front of the ship.

Through the window, Dib saw three vessels facing theirs, spread apart in a perfectly symmetrical triangle formation. They were smaller than the Vyyer, all prong-shaped and navy blue, striped by pale green running lights. The lead ship held the Vyyer in place with a ray of blinding blue energy; a tractor beam if Dib had ever seen one.

He always figured it would be sooner or later before he was on the receiving end of one of those.

A panel on the Vyyer’s console lit up and emitted a high, accented voice.

“Vyyer! Identify yourself!”

“Uh…” Dib hunched over the instrument panel, searching for any kind of button that might open up a channel for communication. The occupant of the other vessel apparently didn’t feel like waiting. The voice came again, tense and heated.

“Irken transport ship Vyyer! Activate video link and identify yourself this instant!”

“Okay okay!” Dib shouted back, very aware that they couldn’t hear him, “I’m trying!”

“Vyyer! If you do not activate video link within the next ten seconds, we will assume you are the enemy and commence blowing you up!”

“What?!” Dib squawked, “no! Hold on!”

“Ten! Nine! Eight!”

Frantic, Dib mashed a button that vaguely resembled a word balloon.

A little jingle played, and from the cockpit window, he could see pink balloons being released from the Vyyer’s forward hatches. They floated off into space, along with a colorful little blast of confetti.

The voice from the other ship paused.

“...oh, is it your Hatching Day? Happy Hatching Day! We’re still gonna blow you up, though. SEVEN! SIX!”

“No no no no!” Dib clutched his face in panic and whipped around, shouting toward the stateroom, “ZIM! Zim, wake up! Problem! _Big problem_!”

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE!”

"Ziiiiim!” Dib screamed.

“TWO! ONE!”

Everything went white.


	4. Planet Kloosh

At the last second, Dib threw himself at the instrument panel and slammed a fist into the plasma cannon control.

A brilliant blaze of white overtook his vision for one heart-pounding moment. After frantically rubbing the spots out of his eyes, he saw that the cannon blast had disintegrated the lead ship’s tractor beam module. The Vyyer, freed of its tether, lurched forward, and Dib wasted no time in yanking hard on the ship’s yoke, narrowly missing laser fire from all three enemy vessels.

The whir of robotic limbs among the Vyyer’s warning alarms signaled Zim’s emergence from the stateroom. He skittered into the cockpit as fast as he could manage, shoving Dib aside to take control.

“I knew it!” he screamed, “I’m gone for five minutes and you manage to ruin everything!”

“It’s been ten hours, you green jerk!” Dib shouted back, tumbling to the floor as the Vyyer took a hit. Zim grabbed the yoke with both hands and jammed it forward, accelerating the ship above and beyond the enemy formation. Dib latched onto the passenger seat and hauled himself back up, floundering toward the instrument panel to activate the rear camera. A screen buzzed into life before them, displaying the three blue ships in hot pursuit, bright green laser blasts erupting from their mounted cannons.

“Opening fire on an Irken Elite?!” Zim took a fist off the yoke only to shake it dramatically midair, “who do these fools think they are?!”

“I don’t know! They halted the ship and told us to identify ourselves or they were gonna blow us up! Are these the space cops!?”

“Vortians!” Zim yelled over the sound of enemy fire, “those are Vortian Katan! Attack craft!”

“Vortians? The couch guys?? Why are they attacking us?! Did you steal that couch?!”

“Raaugh!” Zim snarled, “I don’t have TIME to play chase with a handful of pointy-legged worm rancids!”

Two Katan had overtaken their ship by now, flanking either side of its cockpit while one stayed behind. They let loose a volley of energy attacks and the Irken vessel rocked with each hit, alarms ringing and interior lights flashing red.

“They’re faster than we are!” Dib cried. Zim growled and tried targeting them with the Vyyer’s weaponry, but Dib was right; before Zim could even lock on, the Katan formation broke apart and veered off in different directions. It was only a few seconds before they arced back around to continue their onslaught.

The Vyyer did its best to evade the smaller, faster craft. Zim was standing in his chair now, bent over the controls and glaring with intense focus out the window. Then, he pointed.

“There!”

Dib looked. A planet had come into view. Zim wasted no time, doubling the ship’s thrust, speeding toward the orb so quickly that the Katan almost seemed to have trouble catching up. Almost.

“We’ll lose them on that planet!” Zim’s eyes were locked on the screen as the sphere grew larger and larger, “Katan are made for deep space combat, if they chase us into an atmosphere at this speed, they’ll overheat!”

“How do we know this planet will have an atmosphere?!” Dib asked worriedly.

“...oh...eh…well...” Zim looked down for a moment, thinking, then narrowed his eyes and increased speed so suddenly that Dib went flying off the dais, “I AM ZIM!”

The planet was blanketed in swirling, rainbow clouds, something that made Dib hopeful that it did, in fact, have an atmosphere. The prismatic clouds quickly gave way to multi-colored mist as the Vyyer entered the mesosphere. Dib probably would have found it beautiful if he weren’t so busy being terrified. He cast a glance at the rear camera screen; the Vortian ships were right on their tail, but sure enough, they didn’t look like they were holding up well in the sudden descent. Their double-pronged forward hulls glowed red hot, rattling in a way Dib was pretty sure ships weren’t supposed to rattle.

After an agonizing minute of pursuit, the three Katan finally pulled away. Zim laughed triumphantly.

“Ha! Filthy Vortian junk-beasts! There’s a reason the Irken Empire-aaauuugh!!!”

The clouds had parted into the sudden reveal that they were heading straight into a gargantuan vertical pillar. Zim yanked the yoke back as hard as he could, but it was too late; the ship hit the enormous orange formation nearly dead on.

They braced for the impact...but it didn’t come. The pillar, apparently made of some soft material, bent back, with the Vyyer perched on top of the bend. Zim and Dib looked out the cockpit window, then at each other, before offering one another awkward, relieved smiles.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Dib said.

“Yeah,” Zim nodded, “you know, it really wasn’t.”

Then the pillar sprung back into its original position, sending the Vyyer hurtling toward the planet’s surface. They shrieked, Zim clinging to the pilot seat with every limb he could spare and Dib scrabbling desperately for something to hold onto.

The last thing he saw was one of Zim’s PAK legs reaching out toward him.

Then a blow, and everything went black.

* * *

Somewhere, an alarm bell was going off.

Or maybe that was just the ringing in Dib’s ears. With all the willpower he could muster, he opened his eyes.

Everything looked hazy. His glasses were gone. His head was pounding. He lay there, staring at flashing red lights above him. The ship was trying to tell them there was danger.

Little too late for that.

The shadow of Zim’s face fell over him. He was saying...something. Dib couldn’t hear it.

The Irken’s eyes were shining orbs, pinks and reds bleeding together in Dib’s blurred vision. They were pretty. Like huge rubies. He reached out to touch them.

Zim scowled and slapped his hand away. Slowly, the sound of his voice began creeping its way past the ringing and into Dib’s head.

“-least I know you’re alive. I’m honestly a little surprised, I didn’t think humans could survive a hit to the head.”

“Guh…” Dib groaned.

“Indeed,” Zim said.

Dib was afraid to move, afraid what he’d find. Was he in one piece? Were his legs shattered? Was there a huge metal spike impaling his torso? It honestly felt like those were all very real possibilities. He’d been tossed around a lot as an energetic kid on the tail of all sorts of paranormal terrors, but he wasn’t getting any younger, and his currently aching body was reminding him of that fact.

Finally, fearfully, he sat up. The motion made him feel sick, but as he looked down on himself, he saw with relief that he was in one piece. He’d hit his head on something in the collision, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage.

“We crashed…” he muttered and gingerly touched the side of his head. There was a knot forming there, but when he brought his hand back, he saw no blood.

“ _We_ didn’t crash,” Zim said, “the _ship_ crashed. ...with us inside it.”

“My glasses…” Dib reached out with one hand, groping sluggishly around for them.

“Quit smearing your germy sausage fingers all over my ship,” Zim commanded, “I have them.”

Zim stood over him and slid the glasses back onto Dib’s face. Dib stared up at him in a daze. Zim stared back, appraising. A thin trail of clear, pinkish liquid ran down the side of his mouth.

“Pathetic how you need these things,” Zim grumbled and pushed the bridge of Dib’s glasses higher up on his nose before stepping away, “if an Irken suffered from such a disability, they would simply have their eyes replaced. ...or they’d be culled. Whichever one came first.”

Dib blinked and looked around, slowly getting a handle on everything. The ship seemed right-side-up for the most part, but it was definitely a little tilted. That certainly wasn’t helping his nausea any. By his side lay something long and metallic. One of Zim’s PAK legs, curled in on itself like the limb of a dead spider. It had been ripped clean out of its socket, the broken connection point still fizzing and sparking.

“Your leg…” he said. Zim glanced at it, then behind him at his PAK. He had already compensated by deploying another leg from the undamaged, lower right side of the dome.

“Yes...normally, I’d be able to reattach it, but…”

“How’d that happen...?”

“I grabbed you as the ship was falling. Your heavy meat body ripped it out on impact,” Zim answered, looking very disappointed with his decision to save Dib’s life.

“You...caught me?” Dib asked, shocked. He’d been under the impression that the alien had consistently been more than ready to let Dib fall to his death. He gave a grateful little smile, “thank you, Zim...I-”

“Do you know how bad you humans smell on the inside?” Zim asked, waving him away, “I didn’t want your guts splattered all over my ship.”

“Yeah, that’s more like it,” Dib muttered, his gratitude fading as quickly as it had appeared. He clung to a section of railing, using it to push himself into standing position, “what happened, anyway?”

“We won,” Zim shrugged. Dib gave him a look.

“We crashed into a 3000-foot-tall pillar!”

“Yes,” Zim nodded, “we won.”

“How the hell is the ship still in one piece? Let alone us?”

Zim beckoned him toward the ship’s exit. Dib followed on unsteady feet. The exit hatch was already open and the ramp deployed. Dib was going to make some kind of comment about making sure the atmosphere was breathable, but realized it must be if the hatch had been open this whole time. He was glad he’d caught himself. Zim’s condescension would have been unbearable.

As they stepped out of the Vyyer and onto the ramp, Dib’s breath caught in his throat. The sight was intense, dazzling. Rainbow clouds swirled lazily over endless, sloping meadows of tall, blue-green grass. Colossal monoliths like the one they’d crashed into dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see, stretching straight up into the shimmering sky, different shades of reds and oranges. A gentle breeze wafted through, whistling around the enormous columns, sending waves of alternating azures and emeralds throughout the fields. Dib was so taken with it all that he almost forgot about Zim; by the time he managed to wrench his attention away from the landscape and toward the alien, Zim was already in the field, waist-deep in the cool-colored grass.

Zim grabbed the tip of one of the grass blades and pulled. Instead of breaking, it stretched and stretched, until it was a thin line well above Zim’s head and he couldn’t pull any further. He let go and it snapped back to its former shape and size. He looked at Dib.

“It seems this planet’s structure is comprised entirely of latex.”

“Latex...rubber? So this planet is just a big...rubber ball?” Dib asked, in awe. Zim nodded.

“Even the pillars, such as the one we flew into. It absorbed the force of our crash. ...then popped back into place and sent us into the ground. Luckily, since the planet’s surface is also made of rubber, the damage was...not quite as bad as it could have been.”

“This is incredible...it’s amazing! Like those old Kloosh Ballz me and Gaz used to play with when we were kids! Except it’s an entire planet! In space!”

“Yes…” Zim said slowly, eyeing Dib’s excitement with tired disdain, “in space.”

“Where’s my camera?! God, it wasn’t broken in the crash was it? I gotta get pictures of this! And samples! Do you think I could take a sample? Do you think anyone has even been here before?”

“This part of the galaxy is mostly uninhabited,” Zim said, leaning against the ship’s side, “and this planet didn’t have a name on the map. I checked.”

“Then...we...we discovered it?!”

“No, it was already on the map,” Zim said blankly, “it just didn’t have a name.”

“Well, I’m saying we discovered it. We can name it after us! Planet...Dibzim.”

“Preposterous!” Zim shouted indignantly, “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! It should be Planet Zim! I’m the one who-”

“Crashed us into a giant rubber pillar?”

“-EXPERTLY PILOTED us to this planet! It’s Planet Zim. No Dib!”

“What about Planet Zimdib? Your name can come first.”

Zim brought a hand to his chin, considering. Then he scowled and shook his head.

“No, I don’t like it.”

“Fine. I’ll just call it Planet Kloosh. Wait till I tell Gaz!”

Zim just made a face, arms crossed, as Dib wandered out into the rubber-grass field, trailing his hands through the tall, springy protrusions.

An alien planet. Dib could hardly believe it. He was on an alien planet. He’d seen a lot of fantastic things in his life; vampire bees, interdimensional monsters, Eldritch horrors older than the galaxy itself. Zombie antelopes. But never in his life did he think he’d actually one day step foot on a planet that wasn’t Earth.

The planet’s small sun was beginning to dip down into the obelisk-studded horizon, setting the kaleidoscope sky ablaze with purples and oranges. He turned back to look at Zim.

“Hey! You wanna check this place out with me?”

Zim was looking up at the sky, the brilliant colors reflected in his large, shining eyes. Finally, he turned his attention toward Dib. His expression was contemplative for a moment, then he narrowed his eyes and turned away.

“We’ve lost enough time as it is. I won’t be Nullified just because you’re enamored with some ridiculous rubber ball planet.”

“But-”

“If it’s that fascinating to you, Dib-beast,” Zim said as he mounted the ramp and began climbing up, “perhaps we can return on our way back to Urth. Until then—”

He paused in the middle of his sentence, then fell to his knees, grabbed the edge of the ramp, and vomited over the side and into the formerly untouched meadow.

“Zim?” Dib asked, approaching cautiously. Zim blinked tiredly at him, wobbled, then collapsed backwards onto the ramp. His spider legs retracted back into the PAK with twin metallic screeches.

Dib knelt beside him, pressed an ear to Zim’s chest. He wasn’t sure what he was listening for, but after a moment, he heard strange, steady thumps and gurgles, which sounded promising. He sighed, and scooped Zim up in his arms.

“If you die before I’m able to show everyone that you exist, I’m gonna be so pissed off,” he grumbled as he carried Zim to the stateroom. He lay the little alien down on the couch and pulled the blanket over him.

He stood for a moment, looking at Zim, then shrugged and smiled.

“Well! You’re probably gonna be out for a while. In that case, I’m sure you won’t mind if I go explore a little bit…snap a few pictures, collect some samples. You know, that kinda stuff. Whatddya say, Zim? What’s that? I’m not hearing a no...great! So it’s settled. I’ll be back soon.”

Dib rooted around until he found his camera in the back (thankfully unbroken) and stuffed it into his bag. He gave a glance inside to make sure he still had his portable sample and field test kits. They were there as always, secured.

He stepped back out into the cool alien evening, the varicolored sky beckoning him forward. 

* * *

He had traveled a good bit away from the ship by the time the sun fully set. Fortunately, Kloosh’s clouds somehow still reflected its light, or maybe even created their own. They cast strange, undulating auras on the landscape below, washing the world in odd colors and shapes.

Dib was careful not to wander out of sight of the Vyyer; he made sure that part of it was in his field of view at all times. It was a large ship, so he found he could walk a respectable distance before having to turn back around. As another precaution, he’d left every light on but the stateroom’s, and kept the hatch open and the ramp deployed. He figured if Zim woke up and decided to ditch him on this planet, at least he’d hear the ramp being pulled back up and have time to book it back to the ship.

He was in the middle of placing some cuttings in a specimen box when the rubber grasses began to wave. He looked up just in time to see something fly overhead; a craft, prong-shaped with green running lights.

One of the Vortian Katan.

It was headed right toward the Vyyer, and the unconscious Irken within.

“Shit!” Dib exclaimed, stuffing the equipment back into his bag. He slung it over his shoulder and ran, full-tilt, back toward the ship. It was a difficult task; the rubbery strands were thick and grabby, catching on his shoes, his coat. He was halfway there when he managed to get so tangled up in them that he tripped spectacularly. He then had to spend several agonizingly long seconds ripping the cords away to free himself before he was able to bolt back up. Finally, he made it to ship.

The Katan had already landed by the Vyyer. Its cockpit hatch was open.

Dib scrambled up the Vyyer’s ramp and skirted the corner hard into the amidships, just in time to see a shadow pass into the stateroom. He dashed to the doorway. All he could see in the darkness was the outline of a creature and the gun it held, pointed straight at the slumbering Zim.

“Stop!” Dib panted, hands clutching the door jamb. The shadowy figure jumped nearly three feet straight into the air and spun, its gun now aimed at Dib. He raised his hands into a non-threatening position and backed away.

The creature eyed him for a moment, then stepped out of the room and into the light. Gray-skinned and small, it couldn’t have been much taller than Zim. Acid green eyes glared warily through thick goggle lenses. A pair of thick, horn-like antennae stiffened. A bodysuit ran the length of its form, all the way down to thin, fawn-like legs. Tiny, pointed feet clicked as the thing shuffled, keeping its gun on Dib.

“What are you supposed to be?” it asked suspiciously in a high, accented voice.

The same voice that had demanded the Vyyer open communication.

“I uh...I’m human,” Dib responded slowly. The alien tilted his head back, assessing him.

“Human? Never heard of it. But there are all sorts of weird things in this part of the galaxy...I certainly didn’t think I’d find an Irken out here. Hand him over peacefully and I won’t shoot you in the face. ...that _is_ your face, isn’t it? The part with the eyes and the mouth?”

“...yeah, that’s...that’s right. Look, I don’t want to get shot in the face, but you can’t...you can’t have him.”

“It kind of sounds a little like you _do_ want to get shot in the face,” the Vortian narrowed his eyes and bared rows of sharp, tiny teeth.

“Uh...you can’t have him because...uh...he’s my...prisoner?”

The Vortian faltered a little. His eyes darted to and fro, as if unsure of what to do next, before looking back up at Dib.

“Your prisoner?”

“Yeah! Uh, I mean, how else do you think I got this ship? I commandeered it from him. And now I’m taking him back to my planet so he can...answer...for his...crimes?”

The alien looked from Dib back to Zim, then from Zim to Dib, his mouth a thin line as he considered. Finally, he slid the gun into a holster on his belt.

“Then by the Vortian laws of war, I must allow you to keep your prisoner. Captain Lard Nar, at your service. Your name is…?”

“Uh...Dib. Doctor Dib Membrane...sir.”

“No need for formalities, Doctor Dib Membrane,” Lard Nar’s smile was shy, despite a pointy-toothed overbite, “and good job capturing that Irken. You honestly look a bit too squishy to have done the job, but I suppose anything is possible.”

“...uh...thanks, I guess. Oh hey, wait!” he jolted forward as the Vortian turned to leave, “could I take a few pictures of you? And your ship? Not for any creepy reason, I just-”

“Absolutely not!” Lard Nar gasped, horrified, “never ask that question again, or you’ll get your head blown off! People might think you’re a spy! ...oh wait. Shit, are you a spy?!”

“What? No! I’m just interested in alien cultures, that’s all!”

“...I see...well, Doctor, my advice is that you keep such interests to yourself, at least while the Armada is still stalking the galaxy. Here,” he rummaged through a pouch at his belt and pulled out a button, handing it to Dib, “use this if you end up having problems with that Irken. A ship will be dispatched to help.”

Dib studied the button, a shiny metal thing stamped with a picture of a smiling alien giving a big thumbs-up.

“Oh...thanks. Hey, so why did you-” but when he looked up, Lard Nar was gone. He ran to the entrance of the ship, just in time to see the Vortian hop in his Katan and take off.

Dib leaned against the Vyyer’s exit hatch and stared at the sky as the other vessel departed. He’d officially met two aliens now, and as incredible as that was, he found Lard Nar’s demeanor a little off-putting; the guy was clearly nervous as hell and doing his best to keep it together. Dib looked at the button again before sliding it into his pocket. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to count on someone like that coming to his rescue.

And why had Lard Nar and the other Vortian Katan been after an Irken ship? It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind that Zim might be an interplanetary criminal of some sort. He seemed very predisposed to pointy things, random violence, and using pointy things to enact random violence. But that worry wasn’t really at the top of Dib’s mind. Zim was more or less helpless at the moment, and the worst he’d done to Dib was throw stuff at him. He’d even tried to protect Dib during the crash, and had lost a leg for the trouble.

There were clearly some intricacies to alien societal interaction that he wasn’t aware of. He hoped that maybe, once Zim was more comfortable with him, or whenever they got access to a fully-functioning computer, he could learn more.

He sighed and made sure the Vyyer’s hatch was closed, dropped his bag in one of the cockpit’s passenger seats. He made his way back into the stateroom, kneeling down in front of the couch to check on Zim. He was still either asleep or unconscious, and had been throughout the entire encounter with the Vortian. Dib had already resigned himself to sleeping in the pilot’s seat for the night.

Then Zim made a small whimper. He clutched the blanket tighter, visibly shivering. Dib watched for a moment, thinking. He didn’t know what temperature Zim’s species were accustomed to, but if he’d been comfortable on Earth, he should have been comfortable here as well. A quick look at his watch told him it was 68 degrees Fahrenheit, a very manageable Earth temperature. Maybe it was another symptom of his PAK malfunctioning. Or maybe the ship crash had taken more out of him than he let on.

Dib reached forward and pressed the back of his hand against Zim’s forehead, his cheek. He was ice cold. Even colder than he had been as a corpse fresh out of the containment tank, something Dib found particularly troubling.

Zim’s eyes cracked open in a half-awake squint. He glanced at Dib’s hand, still against his cheek.

“Oh...uh...yeah, sorry about that,” Dib said awkwardly, moving away, “you were shivering, so I wanted to check-”

Thin fingers reached out from under the blanket and grasped Dib’s hand, pulling it back. Zim pressed his face against Dib’s palm.

“Warm…” he mumbled, closing his eyes again. It was only a few seconds later before he dug his sharp fingertips into Dib’s arm, trying to drag him in further. For a four-foot-tall, half-dead space bug, he was pretty strong. Dib felt like Zim might actually yank his arm out of its socket, to say nothing of the claws boring into his flesh.

“Zim, I—ow...this isn’t comfortable, you know. Ow! Zim!”

The Irken's eyes opened again, a ruby glare.

“Zim DEMANDS you give him your warmth,” he growled.

“You’re not in the position to demand much of anything,” Dib retorted. Zim just bared his teeth and tugged Dib’s arm harder.

“Ow! God, okay! Jesus. Move.”

He managed to wrestle his arm out of Zim’s vice-like grip and shoved the alien back, ignoring his indignant yelp. He climbed onto the couch beside him, pulling the blanket over them both, “there. Good?”

Zim immediately latched onto Dib, needletip fingers digging so hard into Dib’s shirt that he was sure there’d be little punctures in the fabric next time he looked.

“Good,” Zim mumbled against Dib’s chest, head pressed firmly underneath the human’s chin. Zim was so cold that Dib could feel the warmth of his own body being sucked out of his skin and into the Irken. He hesitated, then placed his arms around Zim.

“You better not fucking yell at me for this later. Just remember, you ‘demanded’ it.”

One of Zim’s antenna flicked Dib in the face.

He guessed that was his cue to shut up.


	5. Trek to Lanert Bol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than normal, but the next chapter will be longer than normal so it all balances out! I guess! Anyway, enjoy Dib and Zim bitching at each other for the next 3,000 words.

The Vyyer had taken quite a beating from the Katan formation, something that was apparent upon takeoff from Kloosh. After waking up alone on the couch, Dib had headed to the cockpit just in time to see Zim struggling to pilot the ship out of the planet’s atmosphere. Even when they were finally back in space, it was still slow going; the ship puttered along at half its usual speed.

“Those filthy Vortians damaged one of the engines!” Zim groaned. He had removed one of the ship’s interior panels, and now he and Dib stood at the back of the ship, studying the engine’s casing. The machinery exposed within was intricate.

It was also a little bit on fire.

“You said you checked for internal damage before taking off!” Dib exclaimed.

“I did! I just didn’t check...all of it! I’m very busy, you know!” Zim replied, stepping into the storage room. Dib stared after him, flabbergasted.

“We’re on a ship in the middle of space and have had nothing to do for weeks! What were you busy doing!?”

“Things!” Zim yelled from the other room, “you know, things! SO MANY things!”

He returned with what looked like a water gun, aiming it at the smoking machinery. It fired a thick glob of blue liquid, which quenched the fire and coated the exposed wiring in protective gel.

“Anyway,” he shoved the extinguisher into Dib’s hands, “it’s not like we’re not in any danger of exploding. But we ARE in danger of going annoyingly slow! Usually the ship could repair itself, but the nanocells...”

“Nanocells?” Dib looked up from inspecting the gun. Zim sighed heavily, clearly put out at having to explain yet another piece of alien technology to an uneducated Earth monkey.

“Nanocells, stinking human, are tiny machines that can perform rudimentary maintenance on ships as they’re traveling. Vyyers are usually equipped with stores of them in the event of damage, but eh...I never replaced the previous store after the incident with that space squid...”

“Wait wait wait...space squid?? Was there a space squid near the Earth!?”

“Oh yeah,” Zim nodded, “big one. Huge. Almost ate the planet, y’know. Anyway, I’m sure there’s somewhere around here where we can get a new store of nanocells.”

“You said this part of the galaxy is mostly uninhabited,” Dib set the extinguisher gun aside and followed Zim as he marched toward the cockpit, “and those things sound...rare.”

“Ha! Hardly,” Zim scoffed, plopping down into the pilot’s seat, “any species with half a brain have developed nanocells. Even your people have access to a primitive, mostly useless version. Made by some famous scientist guy.”

“Professor Membrane?” Dib asked, dropping into his own chair.

“Eh, I dunno,” Zim shrugged, studying the instrument panel, “maybe.”

“...I’m pretty sure it must be him,” Dib said. He trailed off, overcome with a sudden, strong pang of homesickness, “...Professor Membrane is my dad, you know. He’s the one whose lab I found you in.”

Zim looked up from the panel, peering shrewdly at Dib.

“...so your parental unit is the one who did this to me.”

“My dad?” Dib almost laughed, “no way. He doesn’t even believe in aliens. I’m sure he had no clue you were in his lab. Anyway, it’s a huge complex and hosts some independent scientists, it’s not like he knows every single thing going on all the time.”

“I see...and how can I be so sure _you_ didn’t do this to me, Dib-thing?”

“Little late to ask that. Besides, fifteen years ago…? I was twelve or thirteen or something. Just a kid. I mean, I was good at hunting the paranormal, but I’d never found an alien. And they definitely wouldn’t have allowed me to vivisect one.”

“Yes…the vivisection...” Zim glanced down at his own chest, then back up toward the console. It was a quick and almost imperceptible movement, a brief shift in the color of his eyes. But Dib noticed. He wondered how much pain the wounds caused him.

“So,” Dib said, hoping to distract Zim lest he sink into another one of his dour moods. He waved a hand over a console screen, bringing up the starmap, “where are we gonna find these nanocells?”

Zim scrolled through the projection, pausing on a few blue, transparent planets, shaking his head, then moving on. As Zim searched, Dib brought up the rear camera screen and watched as the speck that was Kloosh disappeared completely from view.

“Here,” Zim finally said, and Dib turned to look. He had isolated a planet on the map, “Lanert Bol. It’ll be a little out of the way, but it’s the best shot we’ve got.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“At our current speed...two weeks.”

“And you’re sure the ship isn’t going to explode?”

“Let me worry about the ship.”

That statement didn’t do much to stop Dib from worrying about the ship. 

* * *

On what would have been a Saturday evening back on Earth, Dib was hunched over a table amidships, examining the samples he’d taken from Kloosh. Zim still didn’t allow Dib into the workshop, but he had begrudgingly brought out some tools to help facilitate his studies. He had even briefly looked at the samples with Dib, remarking that they may be able to replicate Kloosh’s specific latex formula for new biotech applications.

The thought thrilled Dib. First he’d discovered an alien, then an alien planet, and now he might be able to work _with_ the alien to develop tech based _off of_ the alien planet? It was honestly a dream come true. For all the terror around their crash on Kloosh, the gripping uncertainty of space travel, Zim’s initial hostility, the homesickness…it was worth it. Dib was happy. He felt fulfilled, in a way he hadn’t felt in years.

Plus, Zim’s mood had made a marked improvement. Dib wasn’t sure if it was because Zim had actually started resting, or because they were becoming more comfortable with one another, but it was something he wholly welcomed. Part of him even wondered if Zim had been awake for some of Dib’s encounter with Lard Nar and appreciated the lies that saved him from capture. The Irken was still prone to brief fits of rage, still liked to insult Dib and humanity in general whenever he saw an opening, but there wasn’t as much outright animosity.

They’d eat together. Talk. Watch alien TV whenever the ship managed to pick up a signal. They even played games. Dib managed to wire his laptop up to the ship’s terminal, under the watchful eye of Zim, who was adamant that the “junky Urth excuse for what you call technology” would either cause the Vyyer to cease functioning and/or make it implode. Turned out that the ship was just fine, and Dib’s modest game library could be played on its holographic screens.

Zim liked Battleship. He was frighteningly good at it, to the point where Dib was adamant he was cheating somehow. When he called Zim out, the alien responded by tilting his head back arrogantly and proclaiming that he was just “great at destroying stuff”.

Dib believed it.

“This planet we’re headed to,” Dib said, glasses pushed up on his head as he peered into a microscope, “how many species live there? Do you know its makeup?”

“Stop being so excited,” Zim said from the pilot’s seat, “I don’t like it.”

“You got just as excited about that gamma-ray burst we saw the other day.”

“Such power…” Zim whispered in a rasp so soft Dib could barely hear it, “begging to be harnessed...”

“It’s when you say ominous shit like that that makes me worry,” Dib replied, not looking up. Zim turned the chair toward him.

“The Dib SHOULD worry. A squishy, underdeveloped human in deep space? Why, one wrong move and--”

“The planet, Zim?” Dib asked, trying to steer him back on track. Zim huffed and crossed his arms.

“...Lanert Bol is just a gas giant. No native life. But if I remember right, and I do, because I am Zim, it hosts a Fleavian Market. They’ll have nanocells.”

“Fleavian Market???” Dib looked up, nonplussed, “are you kidding me. Like a flea market? Did your people name that too?”

“The Fleavians named it,” he spat back, “their markets are well known throughout the galaxy.”

“Right. And these Fleavians. Are they flea-like in any capacity?”

“...yes...yes, they do rather resemble your Urth fleas...” Zim responded thoughtfully, “...huh. That is a little weird. Anyway, Fleavian Markets have anything you could possibly think of. Beings from all over the galaxy set up at the markets to sell their wares and promote tourism to their filthy junk planets.”

“Think they’ll have a mirror?” Dib asked, running a hand down the rough, patchy stubble on his cheeks, “it’s been kinda hard to shave without one. A real razor would be nice too...”

“As I said, they will have anything you could think of. And I’ll purchase those for you if I have to. Your disgusting human face hairs are scratchy and annoying.”

“If it bothers you so much, stop pressing your head against my chin every time we sleep.”

Ever since the night on Kloosh when Zim had huddled against Dib to keep warm, the alien had taken to creeping into the stateroom as Dib slumbered and crawling under the blanket with him. It was like clockwork; Dib would lay down, set his glasses aside, turn off the light...and then an hour or two later, there would be Zim, cold and shivering and sighing into Dib’s body heat. On one particularly memorable occasion, he had been so desperate for warmth that he’d actually tried to burrow underneath Dib’s shirt. He only got halfway before Dib managed to pull him out.

“I TOLD you,” Zim said, antennae flattened, “the climate controls aboard the Vyyer were damaged in the attack! I can’t get it any warmer in here. Your loathsome endothermic system is the only recourse I have!”

“Then don’t complain about my ‘disgusting human face hairs’!”

Zim just grumbled and turned away. Dib knew that Zim wouldn’t give up leeching off Dib’s body heat, nor would he stop complaining about his facial hair. He was pretty sure Zim didn’t know what ‘compromise’ even meant.

“What else will the market have?”

“Have you not been listening, human?”

“Do they have like...hotels or clubhouses or something set up? Somewhere I could take a shower?”

“Have you not been using the cleansing chalk and decontamination pod?” Zim turned to eye him.

“Yeah, I have. And that foamy stuff you gave me to use as toothpaste. But I miss taking actual real showers with water.”

“It isn’t MY fault that human bodies need constant upkeep in order not to become more HORRIBLY DISGUSTING than they already are.”

“Mmhmm,” Dib swiveled the chair around and stood, stretching before he made his way toward the cockpit, “it’d be nice to get some new clothes too. All I’ve got is what I’m wearing and that shirt I gave you.”

“I am sure they will have something not terrible for you to adorn your pathetic meat body with.”

Dib just snorted a laugh. Zim’s disdain for humanity had long since ceased to trouble him, mostly because the alien seemed to have disdain for...well, for most things. It had become something that he saw as a personality quirk rather than a lurking threat. He leaned over the back of Zim’s chair, watching as an alert scrolled across one of the console screens.

“What’s that say?”

“Lanert Bol’s system is in our vicinity, less than a day out.”

“Can you teach me these symbols?” Dib pointed to the looping alien letters. Zim turned to stare at him, half insulted, half disbelieving.

“Irkens do not share their language with alien lifeforms, Dib-stink!”

“I’ll teach you my language,” Dib offered, sitting in the passenger seat.

“I already know English,” Zim responded carelessly and turned back to the instrument panel.

“¿Español?”

“Sí,” Zim responded, surprising him. The Irken cast him a glance, “you underestimate me, human.”

“I guess that’s true,” Dib shrugged, “but it’s not personal. You’re the first alien I’ve met, it’s hard to get a handle on someone outside my solar system. Why don’t Irkens share their language with other species?”

“It is forbidden. Besides, we speak and write in Galactic Standard in our dealings with other beings. That should be good enough for the rest of you whiny lifeforms.”

“And the Galactic Standard is English? That doesn’t seem right.”

“You do talk a lot, don’t you?” Zim shot Dib an annoyed look.

“Almost as much as you,” Dib retorted. Zim leaned toward him as if trying to increase the efficacy of his glare. It wasn’t very successful, “are your leaders the ones who forbid Irkens from sharing the language?”

“A ridiculous question!” Zim gave up on his intimidating glower and returned to scrolling through the transmission screen, “of course they are.”

“What are they like? Your leaders. What’d you call them? The Tallest?”

“You already know too much.”

“Oh, come on! I’m just a dumb human, right? What am I gonna do with that information?”

Zim seemed to consider this, pausing as he held a hand to his chin. Then he sighed, and continued scrolling aimlessly.

“The Almighty Tallest. There are two of them. They are our rulers.”

“...okay...is that it? Do they have names?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know their names?”

“OF COURSE I know their names, Urth-monkey. But we do not SPEAK their names. They are The Tallest, and we refer to them as such.”

“So, it’s not like they’re your leaders just because they’re taller than the rest of you, right? …Zim? ...right?”

When Zim didn’t answer, Dib stared at him, then threw his head back and began howling with laughter.

“No! You have _got_ to be kidding me!! Are you serious? The only qualification for ruling over an entire species is being tall?!” he clutched his ribs, sides already hurting from laughing so hard, and wheezed, “I’m six feet, you think I could rule you?”

In a blisteringly quick movement, Zim sprung out of his chair and onto Dib’s, leaning over him, hands curled into tense claws.

“OF ALL THE IMPUDENT – I SHOULD HAVE YOUR DISTURBINGLY LARGE HEAD REMOVED FOR UTTERING SUCH FILTH FROM THAT GARBAGE HOLE YOU CALL A MOUTH!”

Dib couldn’t help himself; the hilarity of the whole situation was only compounded by Zim’s obvious outrage over Dib’s amusement. He continued, struggling to breath, even as Zim stood over him in fury.

“Really, though!? It’s just because they’re tall?!”

Zim gripped the back of Dib’s chair and leaned forward so their faces were mere inches apart, baring those pink-white teeth. Through tears, Dib could see that despite being rounded on the end, Zim’s teeth were long, and could interconnect in a way that would surely make it uncomfortable for anyone on the receiving end of a bite. He’d gotten his skin caught in zippers enough times to know how painful _that_ could be.

“The Tallest are all-knowing and all-powerful,” Zim hissed, “a puny meatbag like YOU would collapse into a quivering blob at the sight of their magnificence!”

“I’m sure, Zim,” Dib said, wrapping his fingers around Zim’s wrists to gently push him back, lest the alien decide to take a mouthful of Dib’s flesh for his insolence, “I’m sure they’re great.”

“They are not just ‘great’!” Zim scowled, “you have met me, and know how incredible I am. Imagine beings TEN TIMES as fantastic as Zim! ...eh...no wait, maybe six times. ...no...three. Two! Imagine beings TWO times as fantastic as Zim!”

Dib couldn’t help but smile. Zim was the only raging egomaniac he knew of who managed to make a major personality flaw look charming.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna lower it by another half?”

Zim stared at him, narrowed his eyes, looked up, stared some more, then looked back down.

“...well, I...no! No. Two. We’ll stick with two.”

“All right. Two times as fantastic as you. Got it. Now...you wanna get off me? If we’re arriving at the market tomorrow, I want to get some rest. Make sure I’m ready.”

Zim scrutinized him for a few seconds, then slowly lowered himself to the floor with the help of his PAK legs. He stood back, watching Dib rise to his feet.

“Thanks,” Dib said, turning to step off the dais, “let me know when we get there.”

But Dib knew that it wouldn’t be long before Zim was in the stateroom with him, pressed against his body for the warmth he couldn’t seem to create on his own.

* * *

It was only a couple of hours later before he was proven right.

Once again, Dib woke to the sound of the door sliding open, the flare of light cast in a long stripe on the floor, the soft shuffle of Zim sneaking inside. The alien paused before Dib, like he always did, hesitant and unsure, then clambered up onto the couch. He slipped under the blanket and pressed himself against Dib, clinging to the human like his life depended on it, claws ice-cold and desperate for purchase.

Dib had found it weird at first. Not annoying, not too uncomfortable, but definitely weird. The few times he’d shared his bed hadn’t been platonic in nature, nor had they been with a member of an alien species. However, the strangeness had quickly evaporated, replaced instead by a sense of comfort. It was nice, a little contact (not _human_ contact, but still) in the midst of a long journey. In the midst of a life that hadn’t had much contact at all.

He flipped over and hooked an arm around Zim, curling it underneath and around the damaged PAK. Zim tensed for a few seconds, then slowly reclined into the crook of Dib’s arm. Dib heard him give a small sigh, felt the formerly rigid antennae underneath his chin lower and relax.

It never took Zim long to fall asleep. His snores were soft, and reminded Dib of the sounds of the forest in summer, the chirps of crickets and frogs and all the other creatures that the trees kept secret.

It was a sound Dib didn’t mind drifting off to.


	6. The Fleavian Market

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I try to post every week, but the next chapter might be a little late due to my schedule. In the meantime, thank you for your kudos and comments!

When it was time to dock at the Fleavian Market on Lanert Bol, Dib was ready. He’d packed his bag with everything a paranormal investigator worth his salt would need for a trip into an alien shopping center; his camera, field and sample kits, an EMF detector he’d cobbled together from spare parts on the ship...plus some Irken candy. He thought that with the snacks in tow, maybe he could bribe initially unwilling aliens into having their pictures taken. His deepest hope was that he’d be able to collect some samples, but acknowledged to himself that most people didn’t like to have their hair cut or skin scraped off for a stranger’s collection.

Dib grasped his bag, staring excitedly out the cockpit window as the gas giant loomed into view, immense and gorgeous. Banded in pastels of blue and pink and purple, stripes of colors mixing, overlapping, their vapors shimmering like a mirage in the desert. Almost more impressive was the market, so large that it could be seen from space. Pyramid-shaped, the structure’s multi-level platforms floated high in the planet’s atmosphere. Orbiting billboards advertised its shops, with flashing arrows directing arrivals toward parking at the bottom level. Starships drifted past, coming and going; Dib pressed himself against the side of the window to watch them.

“Don’t embarrass me,” Zim said as he steered the ship down into the docking bay, “and don’t get lost, or I’m leaving you behind.”

“I’ll just put your robot in my bag for collateral,” Dib turned toward him, grinning.

“You will do no such thing!” Zim shot back, “Gir is a highly advanced piece of Irken technology! If he fell into the wrong hands, the Tallest would kill me! And then I’d have to find a new robot slave!”

“But you’d be dead.”

“Precisely,” Zim answered. He parked, shut the ship’s systems down, and pushed himself up from the pilot’s seat.

Sometimes, Dib wondered if Zim’s brain had been taken apart during the dissection too. Then again, he was the one following a possibly insane extraterrestrial being onto an entirely different planet.

They descended the Vyyer’s ramp, and Dib was immediately captivated. The complex hovered in between two of Lanert Bol’s cloud decks. Far above his head, beyond the market’s upper floors, was space, tinted purple by a thin atmosphere and dotted with stars, the outline of the planet’s moons, the distant orb that was its sun. And below them, off the side of the docking bay, was a dizzying drop straight down into the next layer of clouds, pink and blue masses roiling miles below. Dib was still trying to catch his breath as Zim took a ticket printed out at their ship’s station and stuffed it into his hands.

“We’re section Squiggle Dot 8. Either remember it or don’t lose this paper.”

“Zim,” Dib choked, unable to take his eyes off their surroundings, the docking ships, the swirling clouds of the gas giant, “this is unbelievable! How is this place floating!? Is it using the planet’s own magnetic field against it? How does this structure generate its own atmosphere? Is there a plant level providing oxygen?! Can we see it!? If I could get some extraterrestrial plant samples-”

“Blah blah blah BLAH!” Zim tossed his head back, “always with the samples! Remember, we’re here to secure nanocells, not admire the scenery!”

“Oh, come on!” Dib followed the Irken toward an elevator tube, “weren’t you excited the first few times you went to a planet that wasn’t your own?”

“That was a long time ago, Dib-beast.”

“So you don’t remember?”

Zim frowned over his shoulder.

“Zim forgets nothing, insolent human! ...yes. I was excited. Because I was on a mission, just as we are now. The mission to OBTAIN NANOCELLS!”

They had reached the elevator pod by now, the enclosed space magnifying Zim’s already intense voice and sending it echoing straight into Dib’s eardrums.

“Do you have to yell everything!?” he winced.

“FOOL! Zim does not yell! Let’s see…” he leaned forward, inspecting a panel on the pod’s wall as Dib rolled his eyes at the obvious untruth, “Pets, no...Food Court, definitely not...Hypersonic Ferrous Fluids, nope...here! Ship and Home. That level should have both nanocells and whatever else the Dib needs to continue his sad, sad existence.”

“Really? Everything’s on that level? That’s convenient.”

“That is the way of the Fleavian,” Zim said as the pod began its ascent into the upper levels.

“So how are we going to pay for this stuff?”

“Paythings,” Zim fished around in a tunic pocket Dib didn’t even know he had and pulled out a couple of silver rectangles, “the Tallest forgot to give me one before I left, so I just ordered these and linked them straight to their account. The second one is Gir’s, but you can use it.”

“Uh-huh,” Dib took the paything and eyed it, “and do they know you did that?”

“I’m sure they didn’t mind,” Zim waved the question away, “the Tallest’s funds are unlimited. Also unlimited is their love for me, Zim!”

“If you’re sure,” Dib shrugged and put the paything in his pocket. He was a little nervous about using a credit card belonging to the all-powerful leaders of an alien race, but he did really want that mirror. He looked at Zim, “hey, why’d you get your robot a credit card?”

“I found it was better not knowing what kind of stuff he wanted,” was all Zim said before the pod doors opened.

The sight of the Fleavian Market’s ‘Ship and Home’ floor was instantly overwhelming. It resembled a wide street, surfaced with interlocking metal plates and flanked on either side by seemingly endless rows of stalls, staffed by an equally endless variety of extraterrestrial life. Creatures shuffled down the thoroughfare, some stopping to browse, others continuing hastily on their way. Even the smell was unlike anything Dib had ever experienced before; not unpleasant, but certainly very alien. The closest he could come to placing it was a mix of rosemary and copper and matches.

Dib gawked, slowly trailing behind Zim, who pushed forward heedlessly. There had to be at least twenty different species in this section alone, and some of them were about as far away as human as you could get. One alien was literally just a gelatinous cube that was somehow wearing a three-piece suit.

It was a really nice suit.

As Dib stared, he began to notice that many of the market’s lifeforms were staring back. He pulled the collar of his coat up and increased pace to keep up with Zim, which wasn’t a difficult task. The Irken was making a valiant effort to walk normally, but his legs were still weak and unsteady, his PAK limbs doing the brunt of the work.

“Zim, why are they looking at us…?” Dib asked nervously after he caught up.

“They’ve never seen a human before,” Zim answered simply, “you disgust and amaze them.”

But they were looking just as hard at Zim as they were at Dib. He wondered if the sight of an injured Irken was equally as rare as the sight of a human.

The two paused near the edge of the thoroughfare at a floating screen displaying a map. As Zim studied it, Dib wandered a few steps over to the nearest stall. It was adorned with flashing, multi-colored lights, its table laid out with stacks of what looked like bumper stickers. Dib picked one up, some kind of slogan written in an alien language, and it blazed into life, projecting a holographic image in bright neon. Others did the same as he inspected them, each igniting into vibrant displays.

One design in particular caught his eye. He picked it up and it flared out its hologram. He studied it for a moment, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the button Lard Nar had given him on Planet Kloosh...the designs were the same. A grinning alien face and a big thumbs-up. He stuffed the button back into his coat and looked at the vendor, flashing the sticker at him.

“Hey, what does this symbol mean?”

“That?” the merchant was not much more than a head situated in a vat in the middle of a mechanical body, which was itself plastered from top to bottom with stickers. He leaned forward to inspect the one Dib held, “oh, that’s…”

The alien looked left, then right, then at Dib, and then...he shrugged.

“I don’t remember.”

Dib stared back at him, unimpressed. When Zim sidled up to the stall beside the sticker seller’s, looking at a selection of snacks, Dib nudged him.

“Hey Zim, any idea what this symbol means?” he asked. Zim looked at it for less than a second, then scoffed.

“It means nothing. It’s just a dumb face for dumb people to stick on their dumb ships,” he said and went back to his task of inspecting the snacks. Dib sighed, then handed the sticker vendor his paything.

“I’ll take it,” he said. The vendor grinned and nodded in his vat, one robotic arm scanning the paything before handing it back.

“Docking number?” he asked.

“Oh, uh…” Dib pulled the paper out of his pocket, “section Squiggle Dot 8?”

“Right on!” the alien placed the sticker onto a circular disc. It glowed pink for a brief second, then disappeared, “it’s been sent straight to your ship. Thanks for shopping with us!”

“Zim!” Dib turned toward him, “he teleported it straight to the ship! That’s so cool!”

“All sellers here do that. Irken technology, by the way,” Zim studied a cellophane bag decorated with images of smiling squiggles, “and yes, it is amazing.”

“More snacks for the ship? I don’t think we’re in any danger of running low.”

“The Tallest enjoy rare snacks. I was thinking about buying them some as an offering.”

“With their own money?”

“That is not the only offering I plan on giving them, Urth-pig,” Zim shot Dib a glare. He set the bag down before turning and pointing, “the nanocells are that way, so that’s where I’m headed. And I think I can find something nearby to help get Gir back into working order. Get what you need and I’ll meet back up with you. Don’t get eaten.”

“Is there a possibility of that?” Dib asked, alarmed, but Zim had already hobbled away. Dib stared after him, weighing the possibility of getting eaten versus not getting eaten, before pulling his bag up onto his shoulder and stepping out to explore the rest of the market.

He found it was very similar to markets back on Earth, with eager sellers and wide selections of mostly useless, but often very pretty, junk. The variety of alien life was staggering, especially for a section of the galaxy that was supposedly uninhabited. There were blob aliens, three-headed aliens, no-headed aliens, aliens with six limbs, aliens with no limbs, and a few who were human-shaped but wore heavy cloaks and hoods that obscured the intricacies of their forms from view.

At one point, he nervously stopped to ask a slug-like creature if he could get a sample of her slime. She gave him a horrified look and slithered away as fast as she could...which wasn’t very fast. It was extremely awkward. Dib just stood there, apologizing profusely as she struggled to retreat.

After a bit of exploration, he approached a pleasant, homey-looking stall decorated with garlands of brightly colored, thick-petaled flowers. The table was stacked with display cubes, each holding thick, squat jars of what looked like honey. They came in all different colors, glowing warm and inviting underneath the market’s artificial lighting. Dib leaned down to inspect a jar of green honey when something buzzed up to him. When he looked up, he was face to face with a small creature.

“Hello! I’m Merchant Zzeebla. Are you interezzted in some honey?”

It was a little bee-like thing, about the size of his hand. She was encased in hexagonal metal casing, with only her face and a pair of nub-like arms exposed. Her eyes were huge, shocks of cool blue against a warm orange-yellow face. A pair of wings protruded from the back of the casing and vibrated in the air.

“Oh...uh, well, I kind of have honey back where I come from…”

“Oh, not like thizz!” Zzeebla assured, “here, try a zzample!”

“That’s okay, really, I-” Dib started, but she had already deployed a spoon from her metal casing and scooped up some green honey from a sample rack. She flew close to Dib, smiling brightly and aiming the spoon at his mouth. It was weird. But, Dib figured, when in Rome, you do as the Romans do. Or when at a Fleavian Market, you accept alien honey from a bee creature with a collapsible metal spoon attached to its body. He opened his mouth, and she flew forward.

It was the most delicious honey he’d ever eaten. And ever since the vampire bee attack when he was twelve, he’d eaten _a lot_ of honey. It melted onto his tongue, light and sweet, and caused a faint tingling sensation in the back of his throat.

“How izz it?” Zzeebla’s spoon retracted back into her casing. She looked up at him hopefully.

“It’s so good!” he exclaimed, and she beamed proudly.

“Beezzor-6 is home to the bezzt honey in the galaxy! Have you ever been?”

“You know, this is actually my first trip off my own planet!”

“Oh, you’ll have to vizzit zzometime! We run zzome of the bezzt rezzorts and healing zzpazz!”

“...zzpazz…? Wait...spas? Healing spas?”

“That’zz right!” her whole body dipped down and then back up in a nod, “our honey can be uzzed for a variety of purpozzezz, including healing woundzz and ailmentzz! We alzzo produce productzz for rezzt and relaxation!”

“Sounds pretty great, honestly. Rest and relaxation aren’t usually part of my routine.”

“Yezz, I can tell,” Zzeebla said earnestly, peering up into Dib’s face, “the circlezz under your eyezz, they are very dark.”

“Is it that bad…?” Dib asked, self-consciously adjusting his glasses, “I really need that mirror…”

“Vendor Phealii sellzz mirrorzz,” Zzeebla pointed a tiny nub arm to the left, “down there, if you wanted to zzee them.”

“Thanks, Zzeebla. I’d like to buy some honey first, though. What do you recommend?”

Zzeebla, overjoyed, spent the next few minutes chatting with Dib about the various types of honey offered and what their benefits were. In particular, she recommended the green honey Dib had tried, touting it as a stress reliever. She was also more than happy to let Dib snap a few photographs of her, and when he awkwardly brought up the possibility of getting a cell sample, offered to let him clip off one of her eyelashes.

So, with a few jars of honey and the eyelash of an alien bee safely teleported onto the Vyyer, he waved goodbye to Merchant Zeebla and set off to find that mirror.

It wasn’t very hard to spot the mirror vendor. The seller’s booth was decorated in flowing silks, pooling around the feet of floor-length mirrors situated on either side. Smaller mirrors sat perched on platforms throughout the display. But it was the seller that caught his attention. His eyes couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing at first, but as the vendor moved forward, it became clearer; Vendor Phealii was his height, humanoid in shape, with a body that appeared to be made of pure prisms of light. Upon closer inspection, there was a structure underneath, or maybe even on top of, the light reflections; a translucent jelly-like material that looked pliable and soft. But the prisms gave the being a hard, angular appearance at first glance, each facet reflecting a rainbow of color.

“Looking for a mirror?” Phealii asked. They had no visible mouth, but two lights in the head functioned as eyes. They glowed like bare bulbs, bright white and definitely inhuman, but warm and friendly despite. Dib just nodded dumbly.

“Uh yeah...my friend’s ship...it doesn’t have a mirror, so...hard to uh…” he gestured vaguely at his entire face.

“One should always have a mirror handy,” Phealii laughed, a windchime of a sound, and picked up a medium-sized mirror, “I recommend this one for space travel. It will mount to anything using magnetic charge and is made of suspended-state mercury. No breaking in the event of an accident.”

Dib looked into it, and saw himself for the first time in nearly two months. Zzeebla had been right. The skin under his eyes was dark purple, and his glasses weren’t doing much to cover up that fact. Plus, as he suspected, he hadn’t been doing a fantastic job of shaving. His stubble was patchy and uneven. He probably could have done with a haircut too, but that would have to come at another time.

“This mirror is really clear,” he said, inspecting an old scar on his forehead. The zombie antelope took no prisoners, “almost too clear.”

“You worry about your appearance?” Phealii asked. Dib shrugged.

“I guess that’s common in my people. Some more than others.”

“That’s common in many species,” Phealii laughed again, and Dib smiled back.

Suddenly, he heard Zim’s unmistakable voice shouting something about ‘inferior goo-based technology’. He looked over and there he was, only a few stalls down now, and apparently embroiled in a heated argument with a tall mantis alien.

“I’ve never seen one like him before,” Phealli said, nodding toward Zim.

“An Irken?”

“A Defective Irken. Defectives are very rare.”

“Defective?” Dib asked curiously.

“What they call members of their race that do not fit the mold...that are damaged in some way.”

“Oh…” he glanced at Zim, then looked back at Phealii and shrugged, “he’s never said anything about Defectives. Plenty about Nulls, though. We’re on our way somewhere they can fix him up, so I guess he won’t be rare for long.”

Phealii tilted their head to the side for a moment, blinking slowly at Dib before speaking again.

“There is no fixing a Defective. And besides…” they looked back toward Zim, who was now halfway on top of the unfortunate goo vendor’s table, “his damage goes far beyond the physical.”

“How can you tell that…?” Dib asked. Phealii turned their gaze away from Zim and toward Dib, their beamlight eyes intense.

“My kind can see into people in a way that other species can’t. Things that aren’t reflected in a mirror. Your Irken friend is a network of cracks and shards. Spider-webbed and jagged.”

He looked back over at Zim, who was in the middle of the now-familiar gesture of shaking a fist into the air. Was that really what Phealii saw when they looked at him? A mosaic of broken glass, as cracked and splintered as the damaged compartment on his PAK? He thought for a moment, then turned back toward the vendor.

“...what do I look like?” he asked.

“You,” Phealii said softly, “are crisscrossed with old wounds. Some patched well, others patched weakly. I think...you have been broken many times before, and have fixed yourself each time.”

Dib stared at Phealii, awash with a sudden strange sensation, a mixture of sorrow and pride. He had never thought of himself like that, but...he supposed it was true. A lifetime of neglect, of desperation, of being mocked and bruised and locked away just because of what he knew to be true...and yet he’d picked himself up each time, dusted himself off, jumped back into the fray. Phealii could see it all, underneath his skin, and he wondered if they found it beautiful or horrible.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Zim beside him. The Irken cast a quick glance at Phealii, who gave a pleasant bow in response, then he looked up at Dib, brow furrowed.

“Haven’t you picked out a mirror by now?”

“Oh, uh...I’ll take the one you suggested, Phealii,” Dib answered, handing them the paything. They nodded and scanned it before placing the chosen mirror in their own teleporter and sending it on its way to the Vyyer.

“Thank you for your business,” Phealii said, and their body shone brighter, perhaps their version of a smile, “and I wish you two well on your journey.”

Dib waved goodbye as they stepped away from Phealii’s stall and into the street, heading further down the avenue.

“Did you find the nanocells?”

“Yes. They’re being injected into the ship,” Zim waved a small rectangular tablet in the air, “this will alert us when the transfer is done. It’ll be a few hours, so let’s go find your stupid things.”

Dib’s ‘stupid things’ weren’t hard to find at all. He bought an entire waterless shaving kit from a cetacean-like alien with hair for teeth (“we shave our teeth after mating season!” it had enthusiastically explained, “the shaving foam tastes like salted caramel!”). He even managed to find some new clothes at one of the stalls. The pants were bigger than his size, and the shirts were made for beings with four arms, but he figured he could probably tailor them to fit better. He’d hand-crafted dozens of costumes since he was a kid, Mothmen and Bigfeets and Flatwood Monsters, all in an effort to infiltrate the ranks of various paranormal creatures. It had worked a couple of times, so he had faith in his sewing abilities. He picked out three sets of day clothing, and two sets of night clothes in a soft material.

He was also very thankful to find some garments that could pass as underwear. When he asked Zim if he wanted to pick out any clothes, the Irken crossed his arms.

“This uniform is the only clothing I need,” he said, “I will not be stripped of it again.”

Dib wasn’t much of an empath, but even he could tell the subject was a sore spot. He didn’t mention it further.

* * *

Later, when all their sought-after items had been purchased and transported onto the docked ship, they sat on the edge of the market’s platform, legs hanging over the edge. Below the market’s multi-terraced ledges, the planet’s clouds simmered, bright blue and chaotic, and above them the purple-tinged sky shone with far-off stars. Lanert Bol’s moons loomed, lilac against the purple atmosphere, imposing and beautiful.

To Dib, it all felt dreamlike, impossible.

Admittedly, part of that may have been whatever was in that honey he’d sampled, but it definitely worked as advertised; he was unworried, at peace despite the brief moment of alarm Phealii’s assessment had caused. He was content, and as he stared up into the sky of the alien planet, light years beyond his own, his contentment blossomed into joy.

Zim rested beside him, devouring a churro that looked way too big for him, the rectangular tablet in his lap. Dib had had more than enough sugary snacks to last him a lifetime, and so had opted for a sandwich instead. It was pretty much exactly the same as an Earth sandwich except for the word “SANDWICH!” stamped on the bread in big red letters. He didn’t know what that was all about.

“This is all just...amazing, you know?” he finished the last bite of crust and placed his hands behind him, leaning back on his palms to stare at Lanert Bol’s closest moon, “all of it.”

“What?” Zim asked boredly, still focused on his comically large churro.

“This! I know it’s no big deal to you, but to me...this is more than I could have ever imagined! Meeting an alien? Going into space! Onto different planets, whole different solar systems? It’s just beyond...beyond everything! It’s incredible.”

Zim just made an uninterested humming sound and continued eating. Dib looked at him, feeling a sudden and strong appreciation for the injured little Irken that had made all this possible. He looked down at the top of Zim’s head, the crescent cut, the animated antennae. They twitched slightly, with one arced out to the side, like a dog’s ear swiveling toward a strange sound. A little green alien with big pink-red eyes, sitting with him on a floating platform on a gas giant in the depths of space.

Zim looked up at Dib, annoyed.

“Why do you stare at Zim?”

“I dunno, it’s just incredible,” Dib repeated, shrugging a laugh, “you’re incredible.”

Zim had been going in for another bite of churro, but at Dib’s remark, he swung his head back toward him in an exaggerated double-take, eyes huge. His antennae lifted so high up in the air that they bent forward, his mouth slightly agape. He stared for a long time, unblinking, and Dib was about to ask if he was okay when Zim finally spoke.

“...what did you say?”

“Oh...uh...that you’re incredible?”

Dib didn’t know it was possible, but Zim’s eyes grew even wider. They shone with the reflections of the planet’s colors, quivering purples and blues and pinks against their ruby depths.

“...yes. Yes, I am,” Zim said in a venerate whisper, eyes never leaving Dib’s, “...and...how is Zim...incredible...?”

“Um, well...you’re an alien, which is insane. I’ve always known aliens existed, and...here you are. Also, you were dead and somehow came back to life...after fifteen years! ...I dunno! I can’t even begin to imagine all the thing you’ve seen. And your technology? It’s just...god, I don’t know what the fuck was in that honey, so maybe I’m not making much sense, but...I don’t know, you’re just...beyond belief.”

Zim still gawked at Dib, staring as if only seeing him for the first time. A purple color washed across his cheeks. Dib gave a helpless little smile at him and the color grew darker before Zim swiftly turned his head away. He stared straight forward, eyes still huge, the churro forgotten in his hand.

Then he jumped as an alert sounded from the tablet. He looked at it, then back up at Dib, eyes large and unblinking.

“...they are done loading the ship. The nanocells have been installed.”

He made no move to get up.

“You know…we can stay here longer if you want,” Dib offered.

“Does the Dib _want_ me to be Nullified?” Zim asked, but his voice was quiet and had no heat to it.

“Definitely not,” Dib laughed, and Zim flushed purple again, “but thirty or forty minutes probably won’t make a difference.”

“...ten minutes. Then we leave.”

“Ten minutes, then,” Dib answered, and they watched the lavender sky and its blanket of distant stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quickest way to Zim's heart is obviously by telling him how great he is. :)


	7. A Comfortable Couch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also known as, 'the chapter where ZaDr finally starts to happen'!

“It smells like an aquarium.”

“A filthy one.”

“Is it supposed to smell like that?”

“Yes. Well...no. I don’t know. But Gir has smelled far worse.”

Dib leaned over the workshop table, watching as Zim funneled translucent blue goop into the robot’s body. It was the substance Zim had purchased from the Fleavian Market’s goo vendor a few days prior, something that, somehow, was supposed to bring the little mechanical creature back into working order. Gir lay splayed out on the table, wires running from the ship’s walls into the open cavity of his head.

“I have to say, I’m pretty skeptical that this gunk is gonna fix your robot,” Dib admitted, trying unsuccessfully to wipe a gooey mass off his freshly tailored shirt. He’d put gloves on for the job, but clearly that hadn’t been enough.

“I HATE it,” Zim scowled and shook a glob off his hand, “disgusting! Messy! Not to mention he’ll be dripping goo for _weeks_! Even more than he already did! But...this vile substance _should_ patch his circuits enough to, at the very least, boot him into basic input mode.”

“Looks like a rat got into him while you two were in storage,” Dib noted, reaching past the wires and pulling a desiccated rodent corpse out of the robot’s head.

"No, that was probably there before.”

“What-”

“I REQUIRE THE ELECTROTHINGY!” Zim announced suddenly, thrusting an outstretched palm toward Dib.

“You don’t have to yell!” he exclaimed, shoving the tool into Zim’s hand, “I’m right here! Like literally three feet away from you!”

“Zim does not yell!” Zim yelled, then pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes. Dib did the same with his pair, mostly because he felt like his eyes were in danger of rolling all the way out of his head. Zim bent over the robot and applied the tip of the electrothingy to the open compartment of Gir’s goo-filled belly.

Gir shuddered and jolted as energy surged through the blue sludge in his body, limbs jerking and spasming. Then, in a sudden movement, he bolted upright. Sharp, metallic clicking noises emanated from his head, his eyes flickering from dark, to red, to blue.

“Gir!” Zim tore off his goggles, tossing both them and the electrothingy to the side. He slammed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward, “finally!! Quickly, call the Tallest!! Your master commands it!”

Gir slowly turned his head toward Zim, staring blankly.

“My burr-ee-toh...wheeere is my burr-eee-tooooh???” Gir’s voice was shrill, and carried an inexplicable Southern twang, “WHHEEEEERE is my burr-eeeee-toooooooooo-”

His voice rose higher and higher in pitch until it was a shrieking mechanical whine, and then...his eyes faded black, and he collapsed back onto the table, motionless.

“ARGH! _STUPID_ robot!” Zim howled in a voice so high it nearly rivaled Gir’s, “at least the goo did SOMETHING, I guess. It shouldn’t require too much more work to get him functioning properly…”

“Are you sure…?” Dib asked, pushing up his goggles, “he seems...pretty fucked, Zim.”

“No, that’s just Gir,” Zim answered with a weary sigh, peeling off his gloves as he strode out of the workshop, “I appreciate the Tallest’s eagerness to award me such a new model, but I don’t think our engineers were quite done working out all the kinks.”

He flung his gooey gloves into the decontamination pod. Dib followed suit, stripping off his soiled shirt and throwing it in as well.

“If he was made more than fifteen years ago,” Dib said, closing the pod door and activating its cleaning cycle, “he’s not much of a new model anymore.”

“I’m sure the Tallest will have him upgraded for me…” Zim said, trailing off into a distracted murmur. He tilted his head to the side, antennae raised curiously, as he looked up at Dib, “...what are those?”

“What are what?”

“These,” Zim moved forward and, before Dib could even begin to make a move to stop him, clamped sharp, pointed fingers down hard on Dib’s nipples.

Dib gave a squeal of pain and doubled over, fighting the instinct to jerk away from Zim, who still held on tightly, his eyes large and confounded. Hunched down to Zim’s level, Dib finally managed to find his voice through the pain.

“Let go!” he wheezed, “Zim!! Let go!”

Zim, after a moment of hesitation, released his hold on Dib and stepped back, watching in confusion as Dib groaned and placed his hands to his chest.

“ _Fuck_ , Zim! You can’t just go grabbing at people’s bodies like that!”

“We are...friends, yes? This is not what friends do?”

“No! I mean...I guess some types of friends...I...you know what, nevermind,” he searched around in one of the storage panels for a new shirt and slipped it on, just in case Zim felt the need to dig his tiny needle fingers into any of Dib’s sensitive bits again, “they’re nipples. I’m a mammal, we have nipples. And they’re _sensitive_ , so don’t do that again.”

“But you are male, are you not...?” Zim asked, hazarding an uncertain glance down to Dib’s crotch.

“Yeah, I am. Males have nipples too. Holdovers from embryonic development. It’s pretty interesting stuff, actually. Did you know-”

“BORED,” Zim announced abruptly before turning to rummage through the storage room.

“I guess they don’t teach manners on Irk?” Dib asked dryly.

“If you were my Tallest, perhaps I would utilize these ‘manners’ you speak of,” Zim replied, his voice muffled as he dug through one of the Vyyer’s snack boxes. On their way out of the Fleavian Market, Zim had ended up buying at least fifty pounds of snacks for the Tallest, a crazy amount of bagged and boxed chips, cookies and candies that had all but buried their previous store of food.

“I’m kind of your Tallest,” Dib crossed his arms and leaned against the door jamb, a smirk playing on his lips, “I’m taller than you, and we’re the only two people here unless you count your broken robot.”

Zim found what he was looking for, pulling an Irken licky-stik pack out from the pile. He glowered at Dib as he exited the room.

“If you were Irken, perhaps that would mean something.”

“So if I were Irken, you’d have to do whatever I say? Sounds appealing. I’d command you to stop yelling in my ears all the time.”

“LIES!” Zim turned on heel to point an accusing finger, “ZIM DOES NOT YELL INTO YOUR FLAPPY HUMAN EARS!”

“You’re doing it right now!”

“How can I, when Zim is here and your ears are there!? Typical human! You make no sense! Ridiculous, large-headed-”

Dib rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. He’d discovered that when Zim got loud and worked up, as he often did, there was one surefire way to curtail the behavior before it got any worse.

“I just want to make sure you don’t wear out your voice. I like hearing it.”

At that, Zim nearly dropped the candy he was holding. Dib tried to stifle a laugh; it really wasn’t that funny if he thought too much about it. It didn’t take a psychologist to tell that Zim craved validation. He put up a tough front, and Dib very much suspected that Zim’s egomania wasn’t an act. And yet, somehow, the simple action of receiving a compliment sent the Irken into shock every time. He’d freeze, whip his head up to stare at Dib, antennae tall and quivering as if testing the air for lies, for sarcasm. It was as if the notion of genuine appreciation was so utterly foreign to Zim that even his body didn’t know how to respond to it.

Dib didn’t know what made Zim that way, but he could relate, at least on some level. Dib had experienced his fair share of trickery and lies, the target of people he’d hoped he could trust but who, ultimately, only wanted to make him the butt of their jokes. By the time he’d reached adulthood, he’d become suspicious of praise, approaching commendation with apprehension, if not outright denial.

So yeah. It wasn’t funny if he thought about it too much. So he tried not to think about it too much.

It took Zim about fifteen seconds to recover and right himself, which, by Dib’s calculations, was three seconds less than last time. He cleared his throat, face flushed purple, and when he spoke, his voice was soft and measured.

“Eh, yes, well...Zim does have an amazing voice, thank you for noticing.”

“You’re welcome,” Dib answered, noting that if he were a more manipulative person, it would have been easy to goad the Irken into doing whatever he wanted through positive feedback alone. Then again, maybe he was overestimating his own intelligence and underestimating Zim’s sheer bullheadedness. If he could put those two things on a scale, he imagined they would weigh the same amount. He grabbed his own snack, a spoon and one of the honey jars he’d bought from Merchant Zzeebla, and followed Zim to the cockpit.

“Think you’ll be able to fix your robot before we reach Outpostia?”

“Mostly.”

“How long ‘till we get there now?”

With a candy stick poking out of his mouth, Zim tapped some keys on the instrument panel. Irken letters flashed onto the screen, large and pink.

“One and one half months.”

“So…let me guess. This is the symbol for ‘one’,” Dib said, pointing, “and this is the symbol for ‘one half’. And these letters below spell out ‘months’. Looks like you just accidentally taught me some of your language, Zim,” he leaned back in his chair and smiled smugly. Zim froze, staring at him.

“That...that doesn’t count! And...besides!! As an Irken Elite, I am able to use my own discretion when it comes to regulation! Rules for Elites are more like...eh...suggestions!”

Dib quietly wondered if that was true, or if it was something Zim was making up to justify doing basically whatever he wanted. He was leaning toward the latter, though he’d seen examples of the former enough on Earth to know that was very possible as well. Zim turned away from him, staring at the letters on the screen and gnawing fixedly at his licky-stik. Dib watched him for a moment, watched how one antenna pressed flat against his head while the other swung out slightly to the side, toward Dib, ready to sense his next move. Dib just focused on his own snack, pausing before he opened the jar. He noted with some surprise something he’d missed before; the lid was emblazoned with coordinates to Beezzor-6, along with a friendly cartoon bee urging him to _‘Vizzit!’_

“Hey,” he tipped the lid toward Zim, “think we can go to Beezzor-6 on the way back to Earth? The merchant from that planet said it was a really nice place.”

“Ugh,” Zim’s lip curled around his candy stick, “Beezzorians. Wretched little creatures. I don’t trust Urth bees, and I definitely don’t trust Beezzorians. Entirely too cheerful. _Ffffilthy_ insects.”

“So that’s a yes, then?” Dib asked sarcastically. Zim gave him a long, silent look. Then he sighed and turned his chair back around.

“We will see, human. We will see.” 

* * *

The nanocells had long ago done their job, restoring the Vyyer’s engines into pristine working order. In doing so, they should have been able to bring the ship’s supposedly broken climate controls back online as well. But Zim had mentioned nothing of it, and Dib still found him slipping under the blanket with him when the ship’s lights had dimmed and it was time to rest. Dib hadn’t asked about it, hadn’t even checked the status of the controls. He had grown to enjoy the body pressed next to his at night, but knew it was a tenuous situation. Neither of them would admit that they liked it, and so neither would bring the subject up lest risk putting an end to the whole thing. A rare, unspoken understanding between the two of them.

Most nights, Zim would latch onto Dib and stay there, still as a rock, as he drew as much heat from the human as he could. And sometimes, when the mood struck, Dib would curl an arm around him and Zim would tense, then relax, and remain fixed in place against his chest until the hours had passed and Dib’s watch alarm sounded. But this night was different. Zim was restless, constantly shifting, tossing this way and that, big, dramatic movements accompanied by heavy sighs.

Dib wondered if he was frustrated with their continued failed attempts at fixing Gir, or maybe even upset that their latest attempt to develop Kloosh’s latex into a viable application had failed spectacularly. They’d be cleaning rubber off the ceiling of the workshop for days.

He might not have known why Zim was as agitated as he was, and even so, he usually wouldn’t have had a problem with it...but the alien hadn’t bothered to put any distance between them as he fidgeted. He seemed unaware, or maybe just didn’t care, that his body was in direct contact with Dib’s crotch.

Dib was only human. And honestly, it had been a while. He could feel the fabric of his sleep pants tightening, and no amount of willing his stupid, traitorous body back into dormancy was working. Any attempt to roll over onto his other side was thwarted by Zim, who preferred that Dib be facing him at all times; Dib didn’t know why, but any time he turned his back to him, the alien would dig those sharp claws into his shoulder and wrench him back around. It was weird and annoying, but usually not much of an issue.

Usually.

It was when Zim shifted again, lower back rubbing solidly against Dib’s groin, that he finally reached out and grabbed Zim’s arm. The Irken turned to look at him, eyes aglow with the reflection of dimmed panel lighting.

“Zim,” he said sternly, face burning, “you have got to stop that.”

“What? Stop what?”

“Moving around! You’ve gotta stop that!”

“Zim moves as he pleases!” he scowled, turning to fully face Dib, “why should I stop?”

“Because! Just...just stop, okay?”

Zim peered at Dib, eyes screwed into slits.

“…now I’m gonna move even more,” he proclaimed, and began to wriggle violently.

“No!” Dib’s other hand shot out, latching onto both of Zim’s arms to still him, “no. Zim...god...okay. Okay. Listen…”

He trailed off, trying to think of how he was going to even attempt to begin this conversation. Zim stared back expectantly, one antenna quirked.

“...okay,” Dib finally said, “you...you know about...like, basic human biology...right?”

“Obviously!” Zim reeled as if he were so offended that it affected him physically, “how else would I have hidden myself among your people? Zim is a master of human biology knowledge!”

“You weren’t being much of a master of human biology knowledge when you nearly pinched my nipples off!”

“That part of your biology is stupid,” Zim answered flatly. Dib sighed.

“Anyway, ignoring that...you know about...uh...erections. Right?”

“Of course,” Zim responded, “what does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re GIVING me one, because you won’t stop fucking squirming around. So stop fucking squirming around!”

“What???” Zim gaped. He pushed himself up, twisting to look about the room before swiveling back toward Dib, “the Dib lies!! There is no erection here! I see no erection! And how would my moving create one?”

Dib stared blankly at him.

“...oh my god. Zim. Are you serious.”

“Yes!” Zim exclaimed, looking as baffled as Dib felt. Dib slapped a hand to his face and dragged it down his cheeks.

“...let’s try this again. Do you know what an erection _is_???”

“Something that is erected!” the look on Zim’s face was one of a person both proud to display their knowledge and befuddled as to why they even needed to, “such as a building or monument! Such a thing is too large to fit in the Vyyer, and though I AM amazing, the simple act of me moving should not be enough to create-”

“Oh my god. You don’t know. You have no idea!”

“What?! Of what?!” Zim yelled. Dib winced, kept his eyes screwed tight, took a deep breath.

“Okay…so, to start off with, words can have more than one meaning. You obviously know that. ...what do you know about...uh...human reproduction?”

“Humans reproduce sexually, as do many other organic lifeforms.”

“Right. Yeah. So, an erection is what we call it when the male’s...um...reproductive organ...becomes engorged with blood and...prepares for sex, basically. But it can also happen involuntarily, especially if there’s stimulation to that part of the body. Which is why you’ve either got to stop squirming around, or let me flip over or something.”

Zim stared at Dib through the darkness, still half-raised up off the couch. He flicked his gaze down the stretch of Dib’s body, then back to his face.

“...you want to mate with Zim?”

“What?” Dib choked, voice at least two octaves higher than usual, “no! That’s not what I’m-no! Were you not listening? I’ve got an erection because you won’t stop wiggling around like a mealworm on speed, not because I want to have sex with you!”

Zim looked on and nodded patiently.

“Do not be embarrassed, Dib-beast, I can hardly blame you. I am incredible, and amazing, and attractive, as you have said.”

“Okay, I did NOT say-”

“But, Zim is afraid he’s not interested in being your love-slave. Sorry. I know this is truly a blow to your fragile human psyche.”

“I’m going to kick you off this couch,” Dib grumbled from in between his fingers. Zim glared at him.

“I require your warmth! And it’s MY couch!”

“Yeah, well, it’s MY warmth!”

Zim stared angrily for a moment before reluctantly sinking back onto the couch, laying (thankfully still) against Dib’s body. They reposed for a long time in silence, with only the slight hum of the Vyyer’s engines thrumming through the air.

“Why were squirming around so much anyway?” Dib asked in a soft mutter. Zim studied a loose thread on the couch, plucking at it with a thumb and forefinger, then mumbled.

“...the cut on my body. The large one, with the staples. It’s uncomfortable.”

Dib was sure ‘uncomfortable’ was an enormous understatement, especially from the usually dramatic alien. But before he could remark further, Zim lifted his head to look at him.

“Has the Dib mated?”

“Oh...uh...you mean have I had sex? Yeah. Have I had kids? No, definitely not.”

“By your age, most humans have taken a mate and produced at least one offspring,” Zim noted.

“Guess that’s true...they call it ‘settling down’. Having a spouse and kids. I was never interested in that. There was always too much to do, you know? I had my studies, then I had my job...all that on top of personal research, expeditions, writing articles, Swollen Eyeball stuff...besides, I wasn’t really uh...popular, I guess you could say. I went on a few dates, but they usually ended badly. Apparently I’m ‘insane’ and ‘go on too many hours-long rants about paranormal shit’.”

“The spookies,” Zim said knowingly.

“Yeah,” Dib laughed, “the spookies. Spookies like you. I’ve been into that stuff since I can remember, but no one else takes it seriously, no matter how much proof I find. I’d just...I’d just rather keep doing what I’m doing instead of wasting time trying to please someone who doesn’t really want me anyway, you know?”

Zim lay on his side, head propped under his elbow as he listened.

“I'm afraid Zim cannot relate. ...you truly are not a standard human, Dib-thing.”

“Is that a compliment?” Dib asked, grinning, because he already knew the answer. 

“Of course,” the Irken replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. His countenance was relaxed but curious, those ruby eyes cutting like warm coals through the darkness. He was close enough that Dib could see him clearly even without his glasses on, the sharp cheekbones, the pointed slope of his chin, the smooth, poreless skin.

Dib wanted to kiss him.

 _That_ sudden realization nearly jolted Dib right out of his hide. He was quick to chalk it up to horniness; it had been a _long_ time, and what with all the jostling and the unwanted erection...he could feel his face turning red, could feel the tips of his ears burning. He wasn’t _really_ attracted to an alien, definitely not. Especially not a half-dead megalomaniac of an alien who, sure, was humanoid in shape, but not in most other aspects.

Zim had clearly noticed something. He rose up off his elbow, staring at Dib, antennae raised high as if tasting the air. Dib wasn’t sure if Zim could see his face searing red in the dark, or if he could sense the human’s sudden and inexplicable desire. Maybe both. Maybe neither. But, whatever it was, the Irken had clearly sensed a shift, some kind of change, between the two of them. He watched Dib with intent eyes, antennae stiff and poised to pick up any further signals Dib was going to give (unwillingly or not).

“Uh, s-so…” Dib stammered, quickly coming up with a question to try and distract them both, “how about Irkens? Do you guys...date and stuff? Have something similar to marriage? Raise kids?”

“...no need,” Zim answered after an achingly long beat, “Irkens are incubated by robots in smeeteries and selected for birth when they have developed enough. We are self-sufficient upon hatching and implantation of our PAKs.”

“Then how are Irken embryos made?”

“The Control Brains curate pre-stored cells for splicing. There is no need for the...mating. Or relationships.”

“There aren’t any Irkens who’ve taken uh...romantic partners?”

 _‘Shit,’_ Dib thought. He’d stupidly chosen the worst possible topic to bring up, _‘trying to distract yourself from the sudden desire to kiss an Irken? Why not bring up Irken romance! Flawless logic. You’re an idiot, Dib.’_

“...I know of only a few,” Zim answered, “it is...discouraged. Besides, a properly functioning Irken would not be drawn to such a thing.”

“What if one of those relationships resulted in a baby?” Dib continued, genuinely curious despite himself. This was the most information Zim had given up on Irken culture in the entire time Dib had known him, and he was eager to hear it.

“Impossible. Our PAKs secrete a chemical that renders us infertile. Why leave the future of our race up to lottery when we have a method of ensuring the strongest genes possible?”

“So no family?”

“There is no need for family. We were made to operate alone,” Zim lay back down, shoving one of the googly-eyed pillows under his head. It made one of his antenna bend out at an awkward angle, something Dib would have found very cute if he weren’t drowning in denial.

“So...you were alone on Earth, right? There aren’t any other Irkens there? No other aliens?”

“Gir and Minimoose were there. And my Computer.”

“They don’t count.”

“...then yes. Zim was alone. This is how we operate.”

“Did you ever get lonely?”

Zim didn’t answer at first. Instead, he busied himself by rolling up his sleeve and contemplating the long cut on his arm. It looked dark and painful even in the meager light, even with Dib’s impaired vision.

“A useless emotion,” Zim finally grumbled, offering no further explanation. Dib linked his hands together over his own chest and sighed.

“I get lonely too,” he said. He saw Zim’s eyes narrow, saw him open his mouth to say something. But when no words came out, Dib continued, “you know, when you said Irkens don’t have family, I thought ‘oh, that’s kinda sad’. But...maybe it’s not. Families...they can do more harm than good sometimes. I grew up with a dad and a sister, but I felt like I was always alone. I guess I still do.”

“...are not your family units meant to take care of the young?”

“That’s the idea. It doesn’t always end up that way.”

“...what is the point of the family if they don't ensure the continued existence of the young? Are humans truly that stupid?”

“It’s complicated,” he shrugged against his pillow, “families are complicated. _People_ are complicated. I mean, in a way, I was lucky. I’m still alive. I never went hungry. Me and Gaz, we pretty much got whatever we wanted. But our dad was never around, and even when he was, it was a constant struggle to communicate with him. It’s funny...he’s supported me in nearly every way but emotionally. What a kid needs most.”

Dib laughed and lay his forearm over his eyes, continuing as Zim watched on.

“And here I am, almost thirty years old, laying on a couch and whining to someone who can’t begin to understand any of it. An authentic ‘having-a-breakdown-during-therapy’ experience. But in space.”

“...is the couch part important to the ‘having-a-breakdown-during-therapy’ experience?” Zim asked curiously.

Dib couldn’t help himself. He tried to stifle a chuckle, but ended up bursting into a full-on laugh. He slid his arm off his face and smiled down on Zim.

“The most important part,” he said. Zim nodded.

“I see. Then it is good that this is such a comfortable couch.”

“Yeah,” Dib agreed, and pulled the blanket over them both, “it is good.”


	8. The Specter Nebula

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a very sincere thank-you to those who have left kudos and comments! I love seeing people's reactions to the story, and try to respond when I can, be it through ao3 or tumblr. So thank you again! This is a long one, folks, so buckle up!

The little robot was functional.

Well. Sort of. The loosest definition of ‘sort of’...and also the loosest definition of ‘functional’. Gir sat upright on the table, cables running out of his head, giving him a vaguely medusian appearance. His eyes flickered on and off, a thin stream of goop running from a cross-hatched mouth.

In the previous days, Dib had worked on developing what he called ‘Spider-Man webbing’ using the samples he’d gathered from Kloosh (nerdy, he knew, but Zim was the only person there to make fun of him, and he didn’t know what the term ‘nerd’ even meant). He’d been in the middle of a viscosity test when the idea had struck to splice his Kloosh formula with Zim’s recent goo purchase, hoping it would water down the latex. It was then he realized that the goo might have been too...well, _gooey_ , to have coated Gir’s circuits fully, and proposed they thin it out and try again.

He’d expected Zim to dismiss the idea, scoff and wave him away and walk off as he was so taken to doing, but to his amazement, the alien accepted his proposal. Zim procured silica powder from the ship’s storage, and they worked together, integrating goo and powder until it was a seamless mixture, which they then reintroduced into Gir’s body.

And, it had worked.

Sort of.

“According to these scans, about half of his systems are back online,” Zim stared up at the screen, tapping his chin, “but his AI and memory banks are still fried.”

“Can you at least use him to call your leaders now?”

“Of course not,” Zim huffed, turning to root around in the cables running through the little robot’s head, “because functional or non-functional, Gir never does what I want. What I _can_ do is calibrate his mechanical systems to seek out Irken frequencies. If we enter the range of any active Irken technology, we’ll know.”

“Think there are any Irkens beyond Outpostia?”

“Foolish human. There are Irkens everywhere,” was Zim’s vague response, one that Dib might have found unsettling if he weren’t sure it was mostly nonsense.

“Wonder what happened to screw him up so badly,” Dib tapped a knuckle against Gir’s head, which managed to still sound hollow despite the ridiculous amount of wiring running from it.

“I can run a manual diagnostic on his memory chip, but it’ll take time,” Zim pulled off his gloves, shaking silica powder off them before throwing them onto the table, “we may reach Outpostia well before the diagnostic is over. I can get the technicians there to take a look at him while they repair my PAK.”

“Will it hurt?” Dib looked over Gir’s head at Zim, “when they repair it?”

“I should be unconscious for the whole thing,” Zim answered. Almost involuntarily, he brought a hand up to the cut circling his scalp, wincing slightly as he ran bare fingers along the raised surface.

They had been traveling together for nearly three months now, and when you spend that amount of time in an enclosed space with one other person, you start to notice things about them. And Dib had noticed that Zim, despite a predilection for complaining about anything and everything, rarely complained about his injuries, rarely even acknowledged them.

But the last few days, Zim had been studying his wounds with increasing frequency, feeling the cut on his head, tracing the slices down his arms. Dib had even caught him standing in front of the mirror, tunic hitched, staring at his own reflection. The staples in his chest had glinted silver in the hard light.

Zim wouldn’t admit it, because he had some kind of reputation to uphold, even though Dib was the only person there and he personally had no clue what that reputation actually _was_ …but he knew Zim was in pain. His body was making an effort to heal, but with the PAK so damaged, there was only so much his physical form could do. Dib wondered if it was worth it, the trade-off of having such a sophisticated implantation. What good did it do if your body could barely function without it?

“Looks like it’s improving,” Dib lied, nodding at the laceration.

“You look like _you're_ improving,” Zim shot back automatically, “at shutting up. Except not really, because you keep talking.”

Dib snorted. That was a weak comeback, even for the usually nonsensical Irken.

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?” he simpered in response, channeling his most infuriatingly patronizing baby-talk voice. Zim turned toward Dib, slowly letting his hand lower back to his side.

“...you have this power and did not tell me??” his voice was an awed whisper, eyes huge with astonishment. Dib stared at him before quickly shaking his head.

“What? No, it’s...it’s not a power. It’s just something parents say to their kids when they get hurt. Then they’ll kiss the kid’s scraped knee or whatever.”

“...I see,” Zim said, the wonderment in his eyes fading, replaced with something like a familiar disappointment, “and this does not heal the child?”

“No,” Dib laughed, “it just kind of distracts from the pain, or makes the kid _think_ they feel better. It’s all psychological. My dad actually built a robot that would kiss our scrapes when me and Gaz were kids. One day it bit my kneecap and wouldn’t let go. I ended up needing surgery, and now my right knee hurts whenever there’s rain.”

Zim crossed his arms to his chest, looking at Dib, his head tilted slightly.

“...do it.”

“Huh?”

“Do the kissing of the injuries and make them better.”

“Buh-” Dib sputtered, face flaring red, “did...did you not just hear me? It doesn’t _really_ make you better!”

“But if it will make me THINK that I feel better, then I WILL feel better!”

“It doesn’t work that way! You’re not a child, and you know it’s not a real power! Though...I guess there’s something to be said for willful ignorance, I mean, what is reality if not a construct of our own personal--”

“Zim DEMANDS you do the kissing!” Zim interrupted, shaking a curled fist high in the air. Dib glared at him.

“Fine! Yes! I’ll do it. But you’re gonna have to come here.”

Asking Zim come to him was a power play, and Dib knew it. He wanted to see how serious Zim was about this, if he was intrigued enough, determined enough, to set aside his massive ego and obey the order of a lowly human. It was also a convenient way to stall so Dib could gather his wits. He hadn’t forgotten that night in the stateroom, searching Zim’s face and finding within it the very distressing desire to kiss him.

To his surprise, Zim sidled forward after only a moment’s hesitation. He stared up at Dib for a few seconds, mouth a thin line, then leaned his head to the right, baring the sickle-shaped cut.

So he was serious. His face was purple. Thanks to those monochrome eyes, Dib couldn’t tell which way Zim was looking, but he guessed it was far, far away. After a beat, he leaned in, pressed his lips against the wound. The base of Zim’s antenna tickled Dib’s nose, and he heard the Irken breathe in softly. He smelled like molasses, with an undercurrent of freshly mown grass. It was a nice smell, addictive, one Dib had enjoyed falling asleep to for the past several weeks.

When Dib righted himself and looked at Zim, the alien was blushing furiously. He turned his head to the side to avoid Dib’s eyes and thrust out his arm. Dib looked at it.

“This one too,” he commanded, still not looking at Dib. He obediently took Zim’s thin wrist in his hand, studied the ungloved extremity for a moment. Three long fingers that tapered seamlessly into hard, sharp points. Shallow, flattened pads on the bottom of each digit, on the palm. The skin looked almost translucent, thin sheets of folded jade. It was fascinating. He could have spent hours just studying Zim’s hand.

Instead, he rolled up the sleeve of Zim’s uniform, careful not to aggravate the wound, until his forearm was fully exposed. He cupped the Irken’s elbow, bringing the arm up to his lips, and kissed the cut, lingering for a moment.

“Better?” he murmured against the soft skin, eyes flicking up to study Zim’s face. Zim still didn’t look at him.

“No,” he grumbled, pulling his arm away from Dib and yanking his sleeve back down. He paused, letting the silence hang between them like a heavy cloak, before muttering, “but it’s not worse.” 

* * *

He’d never been much of a sound sleeper. There was too much to think about. Too much to do. Most of his nights (at least the ones where he actually attempted to get sleep) had been spent laying in bed, mind racing, eyes trained on the ceiling, its shadows blurry and shaped like the monsters he knew existed.

But, for a reason he couldn’t discern, sleep came easier aboard the Vyyer. Maybe it was the gentle thrumming of the engines, the nearly imperceptible feeling of movement. Maybe it was the physical and mental toll of being in space, forcing his body and his mind to shut down in preparation for the next day. Maybe it was even Zim and the now-familiar press of his body, the soft, piping chirps of his snores.

What he knew _definitely_ helped his sleep was the Beezzorian “stress relief” honey, which he fully suspected was heavily laced with CBD or THC or _something_. A spoonful of that and he was usually down for the count, sometimes even sleeping past his alarm.

He’d taken a small amount before bed and offered some to Zim, whose restless fingers couldn’t seem to leave his various wounds alone. Cautiously, unhappily, Zim had accepted a fourth of a spoonful. He was so small, so thin, that Dib expected even that paltry amount to conk him out for at least the next twelve hours.

So, it surprised him when he woke to a three-fingered hand slapping at his face. Of course, it being Zim, it couldn’t just be _one_ slap; no, it was a series of slaps, hard whacks to the side of his head, all in quick succession.

“Zim,” Dib mumbled against the pillow, groggily reaching out to grab Zim’s hand, “Zim, stop! Stop. What the fuck.”

“You should look out the window, Dib-creature,” said Zim’s voice from somewhere above him. Dib groaned and opened his eyes, twisting to look at Zim.

The room was filled with white-blue light, casting strange shadows on the walls, illuminating the form of the Irken sitting on top of him. Zim gazed down on him expectantly, his skin the color of honeydew in the brilliant glow.

“Get off,” Dib grunted.

“I will get off when you sit up and look!”

“I can’t sit up and look if you don’t get off!”

Zim pursed his lips at Dib, studying him for a moment before reluctantly sliding off of him and back onto the cushion. He sat on his legs and pointed to the window port. Dib pushed himself up and looked.

A colossal nebula loomed in the distance, giant sweeps of cosmic dust in varying shades of blue, striped with thin, wavering lines of pink. It stretched, infinite and elongate, across the blackness of space, solid white-blues at its fore flowing downwards, where they thinned into sheer, billowing clouds. It bore resemblance to a wraith, draped in robes of gossamer, as stunning as it was ominous. Thin, vaporous arms stretched forward, beckoning, into what seemed like perpetuity.

For another one of a handful of times since starting his journey, Dib was at a total loss for words. He gaped, mouth hanging open, eyes wide at the measureless majesty, the sheer chaotic beauty of it all.

“It looks like the spooky on your shirt,” he heard Zim’s voice beside him, “the one you gave me.”

“It’s...it’s...amazing…” he finally answered when it became apparent to him that Zim was waiting for a response. He couldn’t tear his gaze away, devouring the sight before him.

“The Specter Nebula. It’s supposed to be a bad omen. Many ships avoid this route because they believe the sight of it invites disaster.”

“Yeah?” Dib asked, finally wrenching his eyes away from the huge spectacle and focusing on the smaller, greener spectacle sitting beside him, “and what do you believe?”

“Irkens do not subscribe to the superstitious nonsense of lesser beings,” Zim said dismissively, “it is a collection of dust and gas that happens to look like an undead horror demon. Anyway, you like the spookies, so I thought you’d want to see it.”

“You were right,” Dib gave a soft laugh as he turned to the window once more, “maybe more right than you’ve ever been before.”

“Impossible! Zim is one hundred percent right at all times.”

“Of course you are,” Dib said. He’d meant for the statement to be sarcastic, but the wonder before him had stripped away any contention from his voice. The nebula glowed as bright as a star, trillions upon trillions of brilliant motes of dust casting pale blue light through the Vyyer’s port. Him, the couch, the room, Zim, all bathed in an azure-white radiance, ethereal. Like time was standing still.

“So you are glad to see it?”

“Beyond glad,” Dib breathed, “it’s incredible.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah,” Dib chuckled, “just like you.”

Zim gave a lofty smile, clearly pleased with himself. In the white-blue light, Dib noticed Zim’s fingers wrapped around his injured arm. Without much thought as to what he was doing, he reached forward, took Zim’s wrist.

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

“Yes,” Zim said. His eyes looked inky in the blue light, boundless chasms of crimson.

Dib pulled Zim’s arm forward, rolled up the sleeve, pressed his lips against the cut. As Zim’s cheeks darkened, Dib took the opportunity to study his hand again. He ran his fingers down the textured pads of his palm before turning it over and tracing the lines of his tendons, his knuckles, all the way down to the sharp fingertips. The Irken’s skin was clammy but soft, thin but velvety.

He slid a hand to the back of Zim’s neck, feeling the hard muscles underneath tense. But when Dib tipped his head forward, kissed the curved cut under the antenna, the alien relaxed, leaned forward, breathed out. A tentative three-fingered hand reached out to touch Dib’s hair, brushing back the dark strands, sliding cautiously through the fluffy cowlick Dib could never seem to get to lay flat.

Dib was pretty sure he was dreaming. Between the honey and the unreal light filtering through the window, he felt utterly divorced from reality, unsure as to where the line between the actual and the imaginary was drawn. He drew away from Zim, saw the Irken watching him intently, studying his face, a hand still buried in his hair. They were close, and Zim’s antennae were bent forward, tentatively brushing against Dib’s forehead, his temples. Feeling, tasting, smelling.

When Dib smiled at him, Zim pulled away, antennae whipping back against his head. He looked guilty, as if caught in the act of something utterly taboo. His eyes were large; scared, intrigued, excited. Dib could see all this and more in their endless depths.

Dib felt those things too, wondered what his own eyes were reflecting. He reached a gentle hand to the base of Zim’s antenna, running a finger along the segmented stalk. He was surprised when Zim shuddered, eyes sliding closed.

“Did I make it feel better?” he asked softly, giving the cut on his scalp a soft touch before sliding the pads of his fingertips down the side of Zim’s face. Zim bit his lip, rounded teeth digging hard into the skin.

“Yes,” Zim said again, in an uncharacteristically soft voice. Dib could see the reflection of the Specter Nebula in those huge, shining eyes.

“You know,” Dib murmured, “when I first saw you in that tank, I thought you looked pretty gross.”

Zim automatically scowled, antennae laying flat against his head.

“But,” Dib continued, and Zim’s antennae quirked, “I was wrong. You’re...kind of...beautiful.”

“...yes...well,” Zim choked, clearing his throat before continuing, “...I _am_ Zim. ...and you are...not as wholly disgusting as the rest of your kind.”

“You’ve really got a way with words, you know?” Dib huffed, amused. Zim offered him a cheeky half-smile and gave no resistance when Dib leaned forward, kissing the wound on his head again. His heart was thudding hard in his chest, his head clouded with desire. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted something so bad that it physically ached.

“Zim,” he murmured against the cut, nosing the base of the antenna, “do Irkens...have you...kissed anyone before?”

“Yes,” Zim replied, surprising Dib. He pulled back a little to look at him, “you, just now.”

It took Dib a moment to understand, then he laughed.

“You’re such a smartass,” he whispered fondly, “that was me kissing you, not you kissing me.”

“There’s a difference?” Zim asked so innocently that Dib knew he had to be feigning it.

“Absolutely.”

“Show me.”

Those two words, spoken in a soft growl, half command, half plea, made Dib’s heart leap into his throat. He wasted no time, because they were different species from different solar systems, so unknown to one another, and yet, by now, so familiar...it had to be done now, and it had to be done fast. Before either could give it it a second thought. He slid his hands up the sides of Zim’s face, bent forward, pressed their lips together.

It was fairly obvious that Zim had never kissed anyone before in his life. But it seemed he learned quickly, copying the motion of Dib’s lips. It only took a moment before he brought his own hands forward to caress Dib’s face, echoing each gesture the human made.

It seemed a long time before they pulled apart, each searching the other’s eyes for something recognizable; whether it be regret, or joy, or desire. Neither knew what they would find, what they _wanted_ to find.

“Did you like it…?” Dib asked slowly.

“No,” Zim said solidly, before adding, “do it again.”

And because there wasn’t any saying no to Zim, Dib did it again. When he slipped his tongue past Zim’s lips, Zim gasped into Dib’s mouth and he found what he had been looking for; that bizarre segmented tongue, those rounded zipper teeth. He felt drunk on desire, on the strange thrill of finally exploring the body of an alien lifeform, the oddness of it all.

Zim, not to be outdone, dutifully copied Dib’s movements and added his own, more aggressive spin. His tongue lashed against Dib’s, his claws raked down the back of Dib’s scalp. And before Dib knew what was happening, he was laying back against the couch, Zim on top of him, sharp fingers in his hair, kissing him with such abandon that Dib finally had to break free and gasp for air. Dib gazed up at him, eyes half-lidded, head spinning, and the alien above him looked celestial in the nebula’s brilliance.

One hand was on Zim’s thigh. He didn’t remember doing that.

“So you did like it,” he said breathlessly. Zim stared back, his eyes wide, his antennae bending in opposite directions, like they didn’t know which way to go.

“It’s disgusting,” he breathed, “you’re disgusting.”

But he lay on top of Dib, resting his head against the human’s chest, fingers clutching hard at his shirt. Dib wrapped his arms around Zim and stared past him, past the back of the couch and out the window at the Specter Nebula, wondering if Zim was pretending to sleep.

* * *

The thing about being on a ship traveling through the depths of space is that there’s really no way to escape after making a huge mistake. No running out the back door in the dead of night, no getting in your car and driving hundreds of miles away from the problem. In a ship in the depths of space, it was just you and your mistake.

You, your mistake, and the tiny alien you made out with the night before.

When Dib’s watch sounded its alarm and the Vyyer’s lights came up, when they were well past the haunting blue-white beauty of the Specter Nebula, Dib had woken to an empty couch and a dead weight in the pit of his stomach. Reality felt, well, _real_ again. And he had made out with an alien. _That_ wasn’t really the problem, if Dib was being honest with himself. In high school he’d been voted “Most Likely to Make Out With an Alien” and, hey, it turned out to be accurate.

The issue was that he had made out with a particularly antagonistic alien, who he was still stuck in close quarters with for the next five or so months.

He was sure Zim would regret the whole thing, sure he would never talk to Dib again, and that was going to make the rest of their journey very, very difficult. To say nothing of his tenuous plans to announce the existence of alien life with Zim’s help.

Still, he couldn’t hide in the stateroom forever. He got dressed and crept out, rounding the corner cautiously. And there was Zim, standing at a table amidships. He turned to Dib and held up a handful of small canisters.

“I have fixed your formula,” he said, beaming arrogantly, “for the spider-human webs. Few have received such charity from Zim. Be gracious!”

“What…?” Dib asked, totally thrown for a loop. He’d expected Zim to be hunched over the Vyyer’s control panel or shut away in the workshop, silent and ashamed. This was a surprise.

“The formula,” Zim repeated, smile fading, clearly annoyed that he had yet to be showered with praise, “for the spider-human webs. Using the latex from your stupidly-named planet. I fixed it and assembled this deployment system. Per your diagrams.”

He scooped a wide, metallic bracelet off the table, inserting one of the cartridges into a hollow slot within. He handed it to Dib, pointing.

“Pressing this lever will deploy the formula. Per your diagrams!” he echoed with renewed vigor. He stood, hands to his hips, chin tilted up, awaiting his accolades.

Dib took the bracelet, turned it over in his hands. He gave the lever an experimental push and a string of blue-green web shot forward, sticking to the opposite wall.

“Zim!” he laughed, delighted, “this is amazing!”

“Yes,” Zim closed his eyes and smiled, “I know.”

“God,” Dib chuckled, pulling on the line of web to test its strength, “wish I had this stuff when I was getting into fights at school.”

“You have fought?” Zim asked, looking up at him in excitement, “how many human children have you destroyed?”

“Well, none,” Dib answered, and Zim’s shoulders slumped in disappointment, “destroying children is kind of frowned upon. Besides, the ‘fights’ were mostly just me getting beaten up.”

“Sad,” Zim said, “but not surprising.”

“Hey! God you’re fucking rude. Are all Irkens like this?”

“Aware of our superiority? Yes.”

“I can’t tell if that’s racism or speciesism.”

“I call it the truth,” Zim said plainly. Then he rolled up his sleeve, thrusting his arm toward Dib, staring up at him expectantly. Dib stared back in confusion.

“Uh?”

“The kissing of the injuries,” Zim said, shoving his arm closer, “to make them feel better. Yes?”

“Oh...you still want...okay…”

In the now-familiar movement, he took Zim’s wrist, bent forward to kiss the cut. He did the same with Zim’s other arm, then moved up to the wound on his head.

When he made a move to stand back, he found a clawed hand latched onto his arm. Zim held on tight, looking up at him with unreadable raspberry eyes.

“You did not finish.”

“Do you want me to kiss your autopsy wound, or…?”

“My face,” Zim said, pointing, “as before.”

“What...really…? You...really??”

“It stopped hurting when we did the kisses,” Zim put his hands to his hips, annoyed, “so yes. I really. Though I urge you not to let it get to your GARGANTUAN head, I only want--”

Dib did what he’d been wanting to do for the past several days now and locked his lips against Zim’s, effectively shutting him up. 

* * *

Dib’s fears about Zim turned out to be unfounded, which was as surprising as it was welcome. Not only that, the Irken obviously enjoyed the newfound physicality he and Dib shared. They developed something of a ritual; Zim would roll up his sleeves, tilt his head, demand his wounds be kissed. And Dib would faithfully obey, knowing that afterwards Zim expected the kisses to move from his injuries to his lips.

And they always did.

Dib remembered often the conversation he had had with Zim about Irken relationships, how a “properly functioning” Irken wouldn’t be drawn to romance. But Zim seemed pretty damn into it. He thought back to what Phealii had said about Zim being a “Defective”, how he didn’t fit in the same mold as other Irkens. He guessed Phealii's observation had been correct.

And ultimately, if Zim enjoyed something, it _couldn't_ have been wrong, because he was Zim, and Zim was always right.

And so, he faithfully kissed the injuries when Zim asked, kept him warm when they rested, gave him Bezzorian honey when he knew Zim was in pain. Despite how difficult the alien could be, Dib found it nice to have someone to take care of. He never thought he’d enjoy doting on someone; he could barely look after himself, after all, and he definitely hadn't enjoyed it. But this wasn’t a chore, and it wasn’t unpleasant. Every little smile, every sigh of relief from the pain, or hitch of a moan from pleasure, brought him a joy he had never experienced before.

It was addicting, a rush of serotonin to a brain that didn’t get a whole hell of a lot of it.

It was just as addicting as their kisses; and they did kiss. A lot. Before sleep in the stateroom, while experimenting in the workshop, after searching for snacks in the storage room. And despite Zim’s repeated declarations that Dib was, in fact, ‘disgusting’ and ‘smelly’, he went just as hard at Dib as Dib went at him, clawing, embracing, caressing.

And while it definitely wasn’t the same as an autopsy, Dib made his own discoveries during their frequent and random make-out sessions. He’d deduced, after one specifically sloppy bout, that Zim’s salivary glands were in his tongue, its segments producing thin lubrication that tasted almost like pineapple. He even theorized that the saliva contained something like bromelain, some kind of chemical that made the inside of his mouth tingle for hours afterwards.

Of course, as their affair became hotter and heavier, the thought of sex wasn’t far from Dib’s mind. Part of it was lust (as strange as the concept of lusting over an alien was), but another was pure curiosity. _Could_ Zim have sex? Dib certainly hadn’t noticed any sexual organs during his cursory examination on the autopsy table all those months ago.

And would he even want to if he could?

Either way, Dib was content with their current situation. It was a fucking weird situation, one that probably would have been utterly incomprehensible to outsiders, but it was theirs. And he was happy.

“I thought it was a space burrito,” Dib laughed, leaning back, “it was in that box of junk with your robot.”

“No, I remember that,” Zim shook his head, “it was a regular burrito. Gir had been carrying it around for months. Like a toy.”

They sat in the cockpit, Zim flicking through a star map in the pilot’s chair and Dib in his usual seat to the right, studying a bag of Irken chips. He’d picked up more Irken, had learned enough of it to know that these chips were ‘delicious’ and ‘don’t make your mouth bleed’. Both very good things, in his opinion.

He'd hoped to be able to read it well enough to make out any signage on Outpostia, but he still couldn’t speak any of it; he’d never heard Zim utter anything beyond English, random snatches of Spanish (which Dib wondered was for his own benefit), and, very rarely, Irken terms that sounded more like random gibberish instead of actual language.

“Well, he can have it back when we get back to Earth. Pretty sure it’s still on the floor in my lab.”

“Don’t encourage that behavior,” Zim scowled, “the technicians on Outpostia should be able to program the fondness for Mexican food out of him. Do you know how much queso there was in my house?! Buckets of it! An absurd amount of queso!”

“Queso _is_ pretty good,” Dib shrugged.

“Do not take his side,” Zim said, waving the star map away. He pushed himself up from his chair and walked over to Dib, standing in front of him. After some consideration, he clambered up onto Dib’s chair with the help of his PAK limbs, settling firmly in his lap.

“The kissing,” he said simply.

And like one of Pavlov’s dogs, Dib set aside the bag of chips, and began the ritual. Gloves off. Sleeves rolled up. A gentle kiss to the smooth skin on the underside of one forearm, then the next. A kiss to the left side of his head, underneath the antenna. And then a kiss on the lips, slow at first, trying to find the rhythm, re-learning how to coordinate between a face with a nose and a face without.

When Dib moved to bite at Zim’s neck, just above his collar, the Irken exhaled sharply, body tensing against Dib’s.

“What was that?”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Stupid human,” was his grumbled response, but he rested his chin against Dib’s shoulder and Dib continued, nibbling his way up to Zim’s jawline. At some point during the migration, he thought he heard a stifled moan. When Zim did the same to him, copying Dib as he had learned to do, the human didn’t bother stifling his. Rounded teeth nipped at his neck, catching his skin, mixing pain and pleasure. Zim paused when he reached Dib’s ear.

“What are these?”

“All this time and you didn’t notice I’m wearing earrings?”

“Fool! Zim sees all!” Zim pulled back, a scowl on his face as he studied the silver studs, “what ARE they. They’re shaped like...something.”

“UFOs,” Dib answered, and Zim just blinked at him, “Unidentified Flying Objects. Like the Vyyer.”

“The Vyyer has been identified. It is the Vyyer.”

“Yeah, _we_ know that, but no one else on Earth does. Do Irkens wear jewelry?”

“No self-respecting Irken has time for such flashy nonsense,” Zim scoffed.

“Are you kidding me? Your whole _personality_ is flashy nonsense!” Dib laughed incredulously. Zim narrowed his eyes.

“I’m going to bite your stupid ears off.”

“Don’t do that,” he grinned, “then I’ll look like you.”

“Yes,” Zim nodded, “you will be beautiful.”

“I regret ever calling you that,” Dib murmured, running a fingertip along the top of Zim’s antenna. The alien inhaled sharply, closed his eyes, and Dib took Zim’s face in his hands, pressed their lips together again. Zim’s tongue immediately shot out into Dib’s mouth, lengthy and searching, and it wasn’t long before his claws were on Dib’s chest, his face, tangled in his hair.

Dib moaned into Zim’s mouth, clamped his hands on the Irken’s practically nonexistent ass, pulling him close. Zim’s legs were spread on either side of Dib’s waist, his crotch against the human’s hips.

Dib felt something wet there, seeping through the waist of his pants, the hem of his shirt. His already mounting desire escalated into overdrive, the thought of whatever was going on down there, whatever _he_ was doing to Zim, driving him mad. He dug his fingers hard into Zim’s back, bit at his lips, pressed his tongue further into the Irken’s open mouth.

It wasn’t until Dib tasted metal that he paused. Something liquid was filling his mouth, something that didn’t taste like the light, pineapple flavor he’d grown used to. This was unpleasant, a mouthful of copper and molasses. Pulling away, he coughed and wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

A bright pink smear stood out, vivid against his skin.

“What the…” he looked up at Zim, who stared back in confusion. The same pink substance trickled in rivulets down his chin.

“I did not command you to stop, Dib-thing,” Zim said, but his voice choked, weak in his throat. Dib looked down and saw that the wetness he was feeling wasn’t coming from between Zim’s legs; the entire front of the Irken’s tunic was dark with liquid.

He gently pushed Zim back, staring at him.

“Zim,” he said softly. Zim blinked at him, then looked down at his chest. He hooked his fingers underneath the sopping tunic and pulled it up.

The T-shaped incision running from shoulder to shoulder and down to his pelvis was dark and inflamed, straining to pull apart. Pink-clear blood poured out from in between the staples, streaming down Zim’s body, onto his pants, spattering in big bright puddles on the floor.

“Oh,” was all Zim said before he fell backwards onto the dais in a dead faint.


	9. The Hexagonal Complex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for last chapter's cliffhanger!  
> ...or...am I...?
> 
> Spell check went WILD with this one lol

There was so much blood. Swaths of it, chaotic pinks streaked across the cockpit floor, covering Zim, covering Dib. He had spent minutes that felt like hours trying to rouse the unconscious Irken, but it was no good. Zim lay there, pale and unresponsive, blood soaking his clothes, trickling out of his mouth.

“Shit!” Dib rose and tore through the ship, frantically searching for something, anything, that could possibly be of help, “shit shit shit!”

There was nothing even remotely resembling a first aid kit on board. It made sense, he supposed, if Irkens could usually count on their PAKs to heal them, there wasn’t much of a need for precautionary aid. But still, he cursed their shortsightedness, cursed _his_ shortsightedness...they could have easily bought basic lifesaving supplies on Lanert Bol if the thought had struck. It was stupid, not picking up gauze or bandaging for himself, not even _considering_ getting anything for Zim, the one riddled with cuts and gashes and burns and...

“Gir!” he flew into the workshop, grabbing the robot by the shoulders and shaking him. Gir’s head bobbed limply with the motion, “I think Zim is bleeding out! What can I do!? Can you hear me?! WORK, you fucking mound of garbage!!”

But Gir just stared ahead, eyes big and blank. No good. Dib let go of him, clutched his own head, tried to calm down, tried to think.

Dib usually did well under pressure, in the sense that he was _used_ to being under pressure. He actually tended to put himself in high-pressure situations with alarming frequency. A good example of this would be the time he’d decided to set out on a nearly year-long space journey with an alien lifeform he’d met only hours before.

But he’d always just been looking out for himself, never had the responsibility of someone else’s life in his hands, slipping through his fingers like sand. It was a terrible feeling, and desperation threatened to overwhelm the more rational parts of his brain.

Finally gathering his wits, he grabbed a container of caking agent and roll of tape from storage, snatched his discarded nightclothes off the floor of the stateroom, and ran back to the dais. Working fast, he stripped off Zim’s tunic, now soaked through with blood, and poured the caking agent over Zim’s shoulders, his chest, down his belly. The cream white powder began to turn an inappropriately lovely shade of pink as it absorbed the blood, before congealing into a sludgy mauve mess.

He pressed his nightshirt hard against Zim’s torso, careful to keep the pressure on. With that and the roll of tape, he managed to create a makeshift wound compress, his own clothing as gauze and the tape as bandaging. He watched anxiously as his blue nightshirt started soaking purple with liquid. The bleeding had slowed considerably, it seemed, but judging by the dark stains slowly traveling up the fabric, it hadn’t completely abated.

Dib sat back on his heels and stared. So much blood in such a little body. He didn’t know how it was possible Zim was still alive. But the Irken’s chest was moving, tremoring shivers wracking his frame.

He didn’t know what to do. He felt lost, in a way he’d never felt lost before. Thinking up quick and dirty ways of getting himself out of trouble was something he’d had to do often throughout his life, and obviously he wasn’t half bad at it, since he was still here.

After all, he had escaped the zombie antelope.

But this was different. Another life might be hanging in the balance. A life that he...well, cared about. As more than just a way to prove he wasn’t crazy to the denizens of Earth.

Sliding his arms under Zim, he lifted him up off the dais and carried him to the stateroom. His head drooped, antennae limp against his skull. Dib lay him down on the couch, and was sure that, if Zim survived, he’d have to endure some kind of earful about getting blood stains on the likely-expensive (or stolen) Vortian furniture. But it wasn’t _his_ blood, and he'd have that comeback ready when and if the time came. He wrapped Zim in the UFO blanket, staring down at him, watching him quaver and groan.

With a turn, Dib exited the stateroom and headed across the hall into storage. There _had_ to be something on the ship that could do a better job of patching Zim than his slapdash compress. They were still weeks away from Outpostia, even if he utilized the Scary-Fast Drive, and by then Zim might well just be a bloodless little husk attached to a dented metal dome.

The thought made his heart hurt.

So he dug through the mountains of snacks and few scattered non-snack items, trying to find something fit for the job. A gangly elbow knocked over a jar of honey and it crashed on the floor, shattering into a sharp, sticky mess. Cursing, he glanced at it, then paused.

He bent down, scooping up the lid and staring at it. A friendly cartoon bee smiled back.

Then, clutching the lid tightly, he rushed out of the storage room and toward the cockpit.

The controls were familiar to him by now, he knew every button, every dial. What Zim hadn’t been willing to teach, he’d learned on his own through observation and a little bit of fiddling with the ship’s diagnostics (though he’d kept that a secret). He brought up the screen he was looking for, reading the coordinates off the lid and typing them in using what he had learned of Irken language.

And it worked. The ship’s screen asked if he wanted to divert course, and he pounded a fist onto the smiley face button that signified ‘yes’. The Vyyer adjusted direction, set off toward its new trajectory.

They were heading to Beezzor-6.

When the screen lit up with the Irken characters for “70” and “hours”, Dib slammed his head against the back of the chair and groaned. Three days was too long. Hell, a _day_ was probably too long.

He eyed the Scary-Fast Drive control, tapping nervous fingers on the console board. He’d seen Zim utilize it only a couple times, despite the Irken’s desperation to reach his home territory as quickly as possible. He’d said it was unpredictable, dangerous. And if the Scary-Fast Drive was so scary fast that even _Zim_ didn’t like to use it...well. Dib wasn’t sure he should be messing with it either.

But a check-in on Zim, shuddering and pale, told him that now might be a special occasion. Settling back into the pilot’s seat, he flicked the switch for the drive and a prompt appeared before him in huge Irken letters.

**ENGAGE SCARY-FAST DRIVE?**

**Y/N**

He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and pressed Y. There was a huge boom of a sound and the cockpit window blazed with light as the Vyyer blasted into hyperdrive. Dib had only experienced this a couple of times due to Zim’s reluctance to use the drive, but it was always extremely uncomfortable; the feeling of being compressed and stretched at the same time, his stomach threatening to travel up into his throat. Outside the ship, points of light were strung out like iridescent lines, each one its own solar system, there for a second and gone just as quickly.

Clenching his eyes tight, he wondered if he had made the right decision. He hoped that the drive didn’t affect Irkens as badly as it apparently did humans; Zim had been right, after all, humans weren’t made for deep space travel. But Zim’s species were more adapted to it, at least he guessed so, and he tried not to imagine Zim’s torso pulling apart, staples flying, whatever counted as his guts spilling out, wet and bloody, onto the floor.

So he sat and waited, body screaming that this was wrong, all wrong, mind overflowing with worry, and the deafening sound of hyperspace in his ears.

After what felt like hours, the ship lurched to a halt so quickly that Dib was slammed against the instrument panel. Clambering up and adjusting his glasses, he looked at the screen.

**SCARY-FAST DRIVE TERMINATED**

**PROXIMITY TO LARGE OBJECT**

The letters faded away to reveal the sight of a planet. Similar to Earth, maybe half as large, with three moons instead of one. Thick, white clouds blanketed the sphere, and below those were rolling expanses of blues and greens. As the ship drifted closer and closer, down through the thermosphere, the Vyyer’s communication console lit up and a pleasant voice issued forth.

“Welcome to Beezzor-6, traveler. What izz the nature of your vizzit today?”

“Hospital!” Dib urged, clutching the instrument panel so hard his knuckles were white, “we need a hospital!”

“The hozzpital nearezzt to you hazz been located,” the voice said, still infuriatingly amiable, “pleazze turn off your enginezz and let our automated zzyzzstemzz direct you.”

With an impatient groan, Dib did as the voice instructed, flipping switches and lowering the yoke into a locked position, shutting off the ship’s propulsion. It was funny; when he’d met Zzeebla, he'd thought her buzzing speech was cute. Now that time was of the essence, he didn’t find the long, drawn-out hums quite as adorable.

He felt the Vyyer give a jolt, and then a pull as it was directed downward. Dib was sure Zim would have refused to let alien bees take command of his ship, but he wasn’t in control at the moment, and maybe that was for the best. Lower and lower the Vyyer sank, until it broke through the cloud deck and the view before him unfolded.

Despite his impatience, despite the fear he felt for the little alien slowly dying in the room behind him, he couldn’t help but be captivated. Below was a city, but unlike one he’d ever seen; certainly one unlike any on Earth. More wilderness than industrial, nearly every inch was covered in some sort of greenery. Waterfalls cascaded from rooftops into pool plazas, studded with flat stepping stones. Instead of streets or sidewalks, there were worn trails of soil and sod, all lined with blooming bushes and shrubs.

They were heading toward a huge hexagonal docking platform attached to an equally huge building complex, several stories staggered and stacked like honeycomb, on top of one another. The building was honey-colored and crawling with ivy, the windows shining hexagons. Ferns spilled out from terraces, and trees grew, full and lush, on balconies. Among it all, flower petals drifted lazily, pink and white and dancing on the wind.

It was beautiful. And for a moment, he’d almost forgotten why they were there.

When the Vyyer landed on the platform, its systems disengaged, Dib wasted no time, jolting out of the pilot’s seat and running toward the stateroom. He lifted Zim up off the couch, keeping him bundled in the blanket.

He was still alive, but still unconscious, his head lolling with each of Dib’s movements. As quickly and carefully as he could, Dib headed to the exit and shouldered the button for the Vyyer’s ramp to deploy. The hatch was barely open before he dashed down and onto the docking platform, toward the doors of the hexagonal complex. Before he could get there, they slid open and he was greeted by a little, buzzing alien.

“I’m Doctor Reezza. Are you the patient?” the Beezzorian asked. Like Zzeebla, she was clad in a hexagonal metal casing, though hers was stark white, spotless. She studied Dib with almond-shaped eyes the color of emeralds, her small mouth set in a serious frown.

“No,” Dib shook his head and hefted Zim up, “him.”

“An Irken,” she said, surprised, “hizz implant?”

“Damaged,” Dib answered automatically, understanding her query. She gave a full-body nod and turned.

“Follow me.”

He walked quickly, following her off the docking platform, through the hexagonal sliding glass doors she’d emerged from. He couldn’t help but notice that, though smaller than he was used to, the interior of the hospital was much larger than it needed to be for a race of four-inch-long bee aliens. As if sensing his confusion, Reezza spoke.

“We get many vizzitorzz to our planet. We have facilitiezz to care for all typezz of life. Place him here, pleazze.”

Two more Beezzorians, also encased in white, brought forth a small, hovering gurney. Dib did as he was told, gently placing Zim on the bed. Compartments on the sides of Reezza’s metallic casing slid open and two mechanical limbs unfurled from within, not unlike Zim’s spider legs. Using the delicate, finger-like extensions at their tips, she set to work removing the haphazard dressings Dib had put in place, clicking her tongue every now and then at the shoddy work.

“It was the best I could do,” Dib said anxiously. Reezza just gave him a narrow smile, more patronizing than sympathetic, which really didn’t help matters.

When the autopsy wound was finally exposed, it looked worse than it did before; swollen and bruised, caked with congealed blood, its staples nearly invisible in the gruesome mess. Thin streams of pink blood and green pus flowed steadily from the areas that weren’t completely swollen over. Reezza looked at Dib questioningly.

“It’s a long story,” Dib said helplessly. She just nodded and turned toward her nurses.

“Get him to the operating room.”

They turned and flew down the hallway, escorting the hovering gurney between them. When Dib began to follow, Reezza turned back at him.

“Not you.”

“But-”

“We are taking him into a zzterile environment. Pleazze truzzt uzz.”

“I’m going in there whether you like it or not!” he insisted. He’d never demanded entry into an operating room, but he’d seen it done on TV, and hoped it would work in real life (on an alien planet) as well as it did in stupid primetime dramas. Reezza just gave him a stern look, both natural and mechanical arms crossed.

“Zzir, don’t make me call zzecurity.”

“Oh please!” Dib rolled his eyes, “you’re all the size of hamsters! What ‘security’ could you possibly-”

He paused when he noticed loud buzzing behind him. When he turned to look, a swarm of Beezzorians stood over him, their metal shells locked together to form a very large, very bipedal, and very intimidating figure.

“Truzzt uzz,” Reezza urged once more, and when Dib turned to look at her, she and her nurses were already carting Zim past a second set of doors and out of sight. He watched the empty hall, then turned back to look at the assemblage of Beezzorians. They glared at him, the mass bending forward. He raised his hands slowly.

“I’m...not going to cause any trouble.”

“The waiting room izz that way,” the group spoke as one, voices booming, pointing a large, multi-Beezzorian hand. Dib reluctantly turned and slunk down the corridor to enter the waiting room.

It was large, pleasantly decorated with flowers and fish tanks, but mostly empty. There were a few patients scattered around, waiting their turn to see a doctor; he spotted a couple of Vortians, an assembly of blobs, and a family of purple humanoids with wide arms and hourglass-shaped eyes. Upon entry, they all looked up at him miserably, then cast their eyes back downwards, avoiding his gaze. The air, though flower-scented, was stale and somber. The same as every other hospital waiting room Dib had ever been in.

With a heavy sigh, he sat in a chair near an aquarium built in to the wall. Fat, multi-colored fish swam by, stupid and content.

Not even a few weeks ago, he would have been overjoyed to have Zim out of commission for a bit so he could explore Beezzor-6; greet the alien lifeforms, learn about Beezzorian culture, study the planet’s strange flora and fauna...but things had changed. Slowly and steadily, but they had changed, and now he was too tired, too worried, to even consider such a thing.

They’d had a few scares before, instances when Zim had fainted, or slept for too long, or sunk to his knees and sat helpless on the floor, all the strength drained out of him. And Dib had worried, but not like this. He’d worried about being left alone in space, worried that the alien he’d gone to such lengths to ensure stayed alive was on its way out.

This was different. This was a full-body worry, one that made his chest tight and his body cold.

How had it gotten to this point?

“Hello!”

He looked up. In front of him was another Beezzorian, a little stouter than the rest of her kind, clad in silver, antennae bobbing. A small hatch on top of her casing was open, a tiny flagpole extending from it, complete with an equally tiny banner that spelled out _‘WELCOME!_ ’ in cheerful little letters.

“I’m Ambazzador Zzorbi! How’zz it goin’?” the hovering creature said in a friendly voice, buzzing her way up to Dib’s face.

“Oh...uh...not great, I guess.”

“Hey! That’zz fantazztic, buddy! Really great to he-oh wait. No. You’re waiting on zzomeone in the operating room, aren’t you? No, that izz not fantazztic. Zzorry. Normally I greet people under happier circumzztancezz.”

“That’s okay...” he trailed off, and when it became clear that she didn’t have any plans to leave, he dragged a hand down his face and continued, “any idea how long this’ll take?”

“I don’t know! I’m an Ambazzador, not a Doctor. My job izz to greet new arrivalzz. May I azzk your name?”

“...Dib. Dib Membrane.”

“You are covered in blood, Dib Membrane,” Zzorbi pointed out soberly. Dib looked down at himself. She was right. The waist of his pants was nearly soaked through, his formerly blue shirt stained dark. Pink had dried red on his arms, and he was sure there was some streaked across his face as well.

“I uh...yeah...”

“Thizz complex connectzz to a hotel, if you’d like zzomewhere to rezzt and clean up,” she suggested.

“No thanks...I’d rather stay here and wait.”

“It may be a while. And frankly, you are...frightening the children.”

Dib looked up. The hourglass-eyed aliens were cradling their three whimpering offspring and shooting him nasty glares. Dib glowered back at them.

“I didn’t just wake up and DECIDE to look like this today, y’know!” he snapped before turning back to Zzorbi, “okay, listen...I don’t have a paything on me, but I can go to the ship-”

“No worriezz! The hotel izz free for hozzpital patientzz and family.”

“Well, he’s...we’re not really family. We’re…” he paused, because he didn’t really know _what_ they were.

“Partnerzz?”

“Friends,” Dib sighed, giving a helpless shrug, “I guess we’re...friends. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she lifted tiny brows.

“...friends. We’re friends.”

“Ah, well. Friendzz are family that you choozze, aren’t they? Here, follow me! Let’zz get you cleaned up.”

Dib reluctantly rose to his feet, following the Ambassador. As Zzorbi led the way out of the waiting room and onto the walkway connecting hospital to hotel, Dib pondered what she said about family. He’d been stuck with a designated family all his life, two people who he loved but who didn’t do much for him. Then again, he hadn’t done much for them either.

As for friends...he’d had a couple, sure, at various points in life. But those were days long past, and recently the only people he’d considered ‘friends’ were Swollen Eyeball members. But they, with their code names and silhouettes and voice modulators, weren’t conventional friends. No one you could text about your daily problems, no one you could meet up with over coffee, see a movie with.

In that moment, in the middle of a walkway on an alien bee planet light years away from his own, he realized that the only person in this universe he had at the moment was Zim. And that particular life was a fragile one, wavering like a candle flame ever since he’d pulled the Irken out of his containment pod.

He sighed without meaning to. Zzorbi looked back at him.

“I’m zzorry. About your friend. But, Beezzorians are well known for our healing abilitiezz. I think everything will be okay.”

“Thanks…” he muttered, and something in his tone must have finally clued Zzorbi in that he was in no mood to talk, because she remained silent until they reached the room. 

It was a suite, a very nice one at that, clearly created specifically for humanoid lifeforms. There was a large, hexagonal bed (Beezzorians went a little overboard with the hexagons, he noticed), a bathroom, and even a shower, something Dib found himself excited about despite his currently dour disposition.

“Thizz should match your needzz nicely, I think,” Zzorbi smiled at the surroundings, obviously pleased with herself, “there is a zzpa off the lobby. Very relaxing. Well, I’ll leave you to it. Have a great zztay on Beezzor-6! Oh wait, no...I mean, I hope your friend getzz well zzoon!”

With that, she gave a happy little smile and buzzed out of the room. After watching her depart, Dib opened the curtains of the hexagonal windows, staring down onto the lovely city below. Strange aliens traveled the crosswalks. Beezzorians floated here and there, their metal casings glinting in the pleasant sunlight. Long grasses waved, green and verdant, the flowers blooming thick and plentiful.

He still felt no urge to explore.

After shutting the curtains, he made the trek back to the Vyyer and started cleaning up all the blood. The thought of it just sitting there, drying on the formerly spotless floor, nauseated him. Zim was big on cleanliness, so big that he might have been an inveterate germaphobe, and Dib would rather not deal with his outraged squawks over a blood-streaked ship. After he was done, he checked on Gir (still unresponsive), grabbed some fresh clothing, and headed back to the hotel.

The water streaming like rain from the showerhead was pure, refreshing. He’d missed proper soap-and-water bathing greatly. The decontamination pod aboard the Vyyer was a useful bit of technology, but it was always uncomfortable stuffing himself inside the cramped, sterile vault, with its floor-to-ceiling lasers and slight smell of burning hair.

He spent nearly two hours in the shower, its water never running cold, as he soaped up and scrubbed every part of himself he could reach. It was like a little bit of home, and it definitely lifted his mood.

Not being covered in blood helped with that too.

He briefly considered shaving, but realized he just didn’t have the energy for it. The universe would have to put up with his five-o-clock shadow for now. After toweling himself off and redressing in fresh clothes, he traveled back to the hospital waiting room and sat.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

“Hey! You’re looking really bummed!”

He’d been zoning out, so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the alien approaching him. To be fair, it would have been hard to notice; there’d been no footsteps, because this particular lifeform didn’t have...well, _feet._

It was a cone.

Literally just a floating cone.

Its purple body, cinched with a red-jeweled belt, tapered toward the bottom, with a round face situated near its top.

“You do realize we’re in a hospital, right?” Dib asked sourly. Meeting extraterrestrials kind of lost its luster when you were sick to your stomach with concern. The alien nodded his entire body energetically, mouth widening into a grin.

“Yeah, we sure are! Had to get the ole antenna patched up, y’know?” he bent forward, displaying a single curly antenna, its base wrapped in bandages, “got wounded in battle. Don’t wanna mess around with antenna health. Right? Yeah, I’m right. Name’s Shloonktapooxis.”

“Battle?” Dib asked, his interest piqued, “there was a battle nearby?”

“Near-ish,” the cone gave an approximation of a shrug, “you know, in space _somewhere_. Not supposed to talk about it. Secret stuff, you get it. You understand.”

“No offense,” Dib grumbled, though he did very much mean offense, “but why are you talking to me?”

“Saw you coming in,” Shloonktapooxis answered, “saw your bumper sticker. Puttin’ _that_ sticker on an Irken ship? Very ironic. Very cool.”

“I don’t understand-”

“Excuzze me,” a voice said over his shoulder. Dib turned, coming face-to-face with Doctor Reezza, “your friend izz out of the operating room and in zztable condition. Would you like to zzee him?”

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely!” his heart gave a little leap, and he turned back to the cone alien, suddenly feeling guilty for being so irritable, “sorry, Shunkto...Shinktoo...uh…”

“Shloonktapooxis!”

“Yeah, right. That,” he said as he pushed himself up and followed the doctor.

“Good luck!” he heard Shloonktapooxis yell from somewhere behind him. As the doors opened and closed and the waiting room fell away, he looked at Reezza.

“So what was wrong with him? We were on the bridge of the ship and that wound just pulled open out of nowhere.”

“The zztaplezz,” Reezza answered, “they were made of a contaminated metal alloy, incompatible with hizz biology. Likely manufactured zzomewhere with heavy pollution. They were infecting the blood, the tizzue. Normally, an Irken’zz implantation would be able to filter out zzuch impuritiezz, but…”

“It’s too damaged,” he answered for her. She nodded.

“Badly damaged. The Irkenzz keep their implant technology very clozzely guarded. There izz nothing we can do to fix the mechanizzm, he needzz Irken care.”

They passed another set of doors which led into a small white room, its walls lined with golden ducts and brightly-lit diagnostic screens. In the center of the floor sat an oval-shaped tub, made of clear material and filled to the top with an orange, gel-like substance. And suspended within, an oxygen tube running from the top of the tub and into his mouth, was Zim, eyes closed and arms at his side.

The container and gel were transparent enough that Dib could see him clearly. The T-shaped wound looked worlds better; the lines of flesh were still raw and discolored, but it was no longer a swollen, stapled mess.

“What’s he in?” Dib asked, curling hands over the tub's edge. Then without even thinking about what he was doing, he dipped a finger into the gel and stuck it in his mouth, “is this...honey?!”

“Yezz,” Reezza answered through an appalled face, “and normally we don’t have to tell people not to zzstick their fingerzz in it.”

“That’s amazing! I got some Beezzorian honey from a merchant, but the consistency was nothing like this!”

“We are able to make many different typezz in varying zztatezz of matter. You are looking at a tank of our bezzt medicinal honey. Anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, immunomodulatory….with enough applicationzz, he will heal. Not completely, of courzze. He needzz Irken care.”

“But he’s going to be okay?”

“The wound will need tending, and even more importantly, he needzz rezzt to recover blood. I advizze at leazzt three dayzz here and two weekzz of check-inzz.”

Dib nearly laughed right into Reezza’s face.

“Two weeks? Sorry, but there is NO way you’re going to get him to stay here for that long. The last time we stopped at a planet, we were only there for a few hours and he nearly had an aneurysm over it.”

“I’m familiar with Irken tempermentzz,” she said confidently, “he izz tranquilizzed.”

“Yeah, but you can’t keep him on anesthesia for two weeks! ...wait, can you?”

“It izz not recommended,” she said with a shake of her head, “which izz why I wazz hoping you’d be able to convince him to zztay.”

“Listen, Reezza,” Dib huffed a doubtful laugh, spreading his fingers wide for emphasis, “you haven’t seen him awake, so you _really_ don’t know how big of hope that is.”

“I’m confident in your abilitiezz,” she answered with a pleasant, practiced smile. Dib bit his lip and looked over at the gel-filled pod and the alien asleep within it.

He was not confident in his abilities.


	10. The Hozzpital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both Zim and Dib are huge idiots that have no idea what they're doing. That's it. That's the fic. 
> 
> Anyway, this is another short one, but the next one should be longer. Enjoy!

“We are NOT staying here.”

“We’ve kind of got to, Zim. For your own good. It won’t be that long.”

“So you DO want me to be Nullified! I _knew_ it! You filthy, awful _human_! I can’t believe you would...can’t believe…” his words trailed off into barely-audible grumbles and his eyelids fluttered, outraged energy plummeting just as rapidly as it had risen. Dib pulled off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.

After two days of sleep, Zim had woken from anesthesia in a very Zim manner, bursting out of the gel tank with PAK limbs flailing, yanking the tube out of his throat, screaming at the top of his voice that he would rain doom down upon the poor, doomed fools who had dared put the incredible Zim in such a tank in the first place...then he’d fallen face-first onto the tile, out cold.

After quite a bit of discussion about whether or not to strap him down, Reezza and the nurses transferred him to a recovery room, where he slipped in and out of consciousness. Dib came and went, chatting with the nurses, checking on him, until the Irken built up enough strength to wake up and stay awake. His most recent awakening had been fairly dramatic; he’d jolted upright, mouth wide and gasping for air, tense claws digging into the delicate flesh of his belly. When Dib rushed to the side of the bed, placing a gentle hand to his shoulder to lay him back down, Zim’s muscles had relaxed, his eyes had softened...only to immediately harden again when Dib explained the situation.

“Two weeks isn’t that bad, y’know,” Dib said, sliding his glasses back on. He leaned forward in the chair, resting lanky arms on long legs, “if you haven’t been Nullified already, two weeks isn’t going to make a difference.”

“And what if we get to Outpostia and I call the Tallest, only to discover they’ve Nullified me THAT VERY DAY because we had to spend an entire two weeks on this stupid bee planet!?”

“That seems like a very specific and unlikely scenario.”

“Zim has been involved in several very specific and unlikely scenarios! Each more specific and unlikely than the last!”

“Can you even walk?”

“A ridiculous question!” Zim announced, making a move to clamber out of his bed, “I have been able to walk since the moment I hatched! Witness my walking!”

He set one bare foot onto the floor, put some weight on it...and immediately collapsed into a crumpled heap.

“That’s pretty much what I thought would happen,” Dib said, rising to his feet with a grunt. He hooked his hands under Zim’s arms and hefted him back up onto the bed, all under the scrutiny of a woozy glare. “You’re weak. Don’t make that face at me! There’s no shame in it, you lost a ton of blood. You should honestly be dead!”

“Zim cannot die,” he responded, his voice feeble but his glare unwavering, “there’s too much stuff to do.”

“Think of it this way. If you rest up _now_ , you’ll be able to do all the stuff you need to do _later_. But if you _don't_ rest now, and end up dying...you won’t be able to do your stuff. Because you’ll be dead. All your stuff will be undone, Zim. Forever. Into eternity.”

The look of pure horror on Zim’s face was simultaneously distressing and hilarious to Dib, who was actively trying to keep a somber expression. This _was_ serious business, after all. He’d almost lost Zim, and wasn’t keen on being in that position again. But, it was a little funny, Zim’s obsession with his work, his “stuff”, whatever ultimate purpose drove him to be the way he was.

“...my stuff cannot go undone,” Zim murmured. He flopped back against the bed, defeated, and laced his fingers over his chest.

“Two weeks on Beezzor-6 and daily appointments with Dr. Reezza. It won’t be bad. I’ve been talking to one of their Ambassadors, there’s some spas here to help you heal and relax, then we can check out the city once you start to feel better. And there’s supposed to be some really cool waterfalls nearby! Plus, I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“What if I don’t want you with me the whole time?” he spat argumentatively.

“Then I’ll leave,” Dib said with raised eyebrows, calling Zim’s bluff. Red eyes narrowed above clenched teeth.

“The Dib can’t leave me alone with these disgusting bee monsters. I’ll destroy you.”

“Then I guess we’re stuck together,” Dib gave his biggest, most cocksure smile, purely for the purpose of being annoying. It worked well, judging by Zim’s scowl, but Dib leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss to the healing cut below his antenna. The alien shifted toward him.

“I hate you,” he grumbled, “idiotic, filthy, revolting, large-headed-”

“You said that we were friends. Friends don’t hate each other.”

“No, we don’t hate _each other_. I hate _you_ , and _you_ think I’m incredible and amazing and beautiful. That is friendship.”

“That, one hundred percent, is NOT friendship. Besides, you don’t hate me. I saved your life!”

“By diverting course and piloting us to this hideous place! I can’t believe you took control of the Vyyer. How damaged is it? Is it completely wrecked?”

“It’s fine. You’re an asshole.”

“Zim is an Irken!” he countered, face twisted in disgust.

Dib couldn’t help but laugh, still drunk on relief, the evaporation of the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Zim was here, and he was okay. They were both okay. He slipped his arms around the little alien, feeling his body stiffen, his antennae shift.

“What are you doing? What is this?”

“It’s a hug, Zim. Don’t be difficult, you know what a hug is.”

Zim grumbled something against Dib’s shoulder, muffled and most likely an insult of some kind or another. Dib pulled away after a moment, hands on Zim’s shoulders, and studied him. He’d been dressed in a thin hospital gown, off-white and cinched at the side. The collar was deep enough that Dib could see the junction of the autopsy wound, no longer pulled together with staples. The flesh there was pale at the center and dark around the edges, raw and tender-looking, but clearly healing.

He took Zim’s bare arm in his hand, turning it so the slice on its flat underside was visible. It was still very noticeable, but was mending well, healing into a lime-colored dash.

“Don’t you want your wounds to heal before you see the Tallest?” Dib asked, placing a kiss there. Zim huffed.

“The Tallest wouldn’t think less of me for being injured. If anything, it would make them respect me MORE! Behold what the mighty Zim has endured in order to ensure the glory of the Irken Empire! ...do the other one.”

Dib snorted and lifted Zim’s other arm, repeating the motion. Then, without needing prompting, he placed a palm to the back of Zim’s head, tilted it down, kissed again the regenerating wound there. When he pulled away, he slid his hands back, cupping Zim’s cheeks.

“I’m glad you’re alive...”

Zim stared back, his eyes large and dark against the purple blush on his skin.

“...many people are. I am Zim.”

“You’re the worst,” he leaned forward, murmuring against the alien’s lips.

“Foolish…” was the only word Zim managed to whisper out before they found each other. Dib inhaled the scent of grass and molasses, now tinged with honey, fingers roaming, discovering one antenna and brushing it down. Zim gasped and shuddered into his mouth, small hands clutching hard at the front of Dib’s shirt.

“Pardon me!”

They tore away from each other, diverting wide eyes toward the door. A Beezzorian nurse smiled back. “I hope I wazzn’t interrupting zzomething important! It’zz time to reapply your zzalve.”

“Don’t you _dare_ , you hideous mutant!!” Zim barked, previously eager mouth twisted into a frown, “not again! It’s disgusting! You disgust me!”

“Yezz, I remember you zzaying that lazzt time, zzir,” she said with a patient nod. Dib bounded off the bed and headed toward a chair where his messenger bag sat. He dug through it excitedly.

“Oh, good! I wanted to document how you guys make and apply the salve. I wasn’t here for it last time, and Zim refused to tell me-”

“Because it’s DISGUSTING and HORRIBLE!” the Irken’s voice sounded from behind him.

“Don’t be dramatic, Zim,” Dib said, pulling the camera out of his bag and turning back around. The nurse had already adjusted the bed into an inclined position, her tiny mechanical fingers working to undo the tie on Zim’s hospital gown.

“DO NOT UNDRESS ME!” he screeched so loudly that both Dib and the nurse (who didn’t even have visible ears) winced. A three-fingered hand tried to swat at her but Zim’s movements were weak, lethargic. The Beezzorian dipped, easily avoiding the raking claws, finally untying the gown and pulling it open to expose the wound.

It had been a while since Dib had seen Zim naked and not suspended in gel, so he allowed himself a quick look. For science. It was all for science! Just as he remembered, there was no visible genitalia; a flat stomach dipped down into a smooth expanse of skin, disappearing between the crease of his thighs.

Dib wasn’t disappointed. He was just very, very curious.

It turned out Zim had been eyeing him as he eyed Zim’s nether regions. Dib quickly averted his gaze, pretending to be fascinated by a piece of lint on the bed. Zim just huffed and turned his attention to the nurse.

“If you must do it, be quick.”

“Of courzze, zzir!” she answered, each chipper syllable deepening the frown on Zim’s face. Dib stepped back and held up his camera, ready to document the process.

The Beezzorian nurse hovered over Zim, smiling pleasantly at him...then opened her mouth wide and proceeded to projectile vomit a gushing deluge of honey, spewing from her lips and onto Zim’s body. The Irken’s eyes were screwed up into disgusted slits, mouth set in such a thin line that it nearly disappeared.

Dib held his camera, forgotten and unused, at his chest, staring in horrified fascination at the tableau unfolding before him. The nurse just kept puking, all the while emitting a horrible retching sound way too loud and way too awful for something so small and adorable. After what had to have been a full minute, she hacked up a little bit more, wiped her mouth with one nubby arm, and grinned over at Dib.

“It’zz zzimple, really,” she said, clearing her throat and either ignoring or not noticing Dib’s still-horrified face and Zim looking like he was going to throw up himself, “the propertiezz of the honey variezz depending on which flora we conzzume. Nurzzezz like me, we eat the nectar of the Avra plant, which izz then converted into ultra-concentrated medical honey inzzide our bodiezz!”

“...and then you...throw it up,” Dib stammered. She nodded heartily.

“We do!” she said, then flew in closer to Zim, who looked like he was trying to murder the little buzzing alien with eyes alone, “and changing the conzzizztency izz zzimply a matter of beating our wingzz at the right frequency!”

With that, her wings started vibrating so quickly they were just silvery flashes in the air. A tinny ringing sound filled the room, and in a matter of seconds, the honey covering Zim’s wounds lightened in color, softened, until it was a thin layer of lotion-like salve. Dib could still only just stare, before finally realizing he hadn’t gotten a single picture.

Oh well. There would be two weeks of this, after all.

Good for Dib. Bad for Zim.

“Well, that’zz that!” the nurse chirped, retying Zim’s gown. He glared miserably at her.

“Get out,” he hissed. She gave an amiable smile and buzzed her way out the door. Dib set aside the camera and sat on the side of the bed again.

“That sure was...something.”

“You did this to me,” Zim growled, but his voice was too weak to be very threatening.

“Saved your life, you mean? You’ll be released tomorrow, so at least you won’t have to hang out in the hospital for much longer. You can stay with me at the hotel. We’ll order room service. It’ll be fun.”

“Ugh.”

“Then when you start feeling better, we can go out for food or something. Like a uh...a date, kind of. I mean, maybe not a date, but a-”

“A date? Zim needs no fruits!”

“How is it that you know that a date is a fruit but you don’t know-no. No, not like the fruit. A date, meaning when two people go out together and just...um...enjoy each other’s company, basically.”

“I can enjoy the Dib’s company anywhere. There is no need for this...date.”

“You enjoy my company?” Dib asked, unable to conceal his grin. Zim stared back as if he’d been tricked.

“I didn’t say that! I meant that I can...dislike you anywhere. I can dislike you in the hotel. We don’t need to go out into the middle of this awful, bee-infested city for me to dislike you.”

“So you wanna be stuck along with me in a hotel room for two weeks? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Zim seemed to consider this for a moment. Then, he shook his head.

“No. I wouldn’t be able to stand your smell. It’s awful. You’re smelly, and awful.”

“You’re the one covered in bee vomit,” he said. Zim gave him a dreadful grimace.

“Against my will! ...I will go on this ‘date’ with you, Dib-beast. Do not disappoint me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dib nodded, “but I’m only human.”

“An unfortunate disability,” Zim agreed.

But he smiled when Dib laughed, and that smile was one Dib had been missing. 

* * *

Dib had been looking forward to the next day, when Zim was to be released from the hospital on the condition he return for daily check-ups. Unfortunately, when the time for release actually came, the Irken seemed insistent on making it a less than pleasant ordeal. When a nurse had entered, bringing with her a hovering wheelchair, he’d immediately deployed a laser cannon from his PAK and blew the thing to pieces.

He’d also very narrowly avoided blowing up the nurse, who, to her credit, seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. Meanwhile, Dib had jumped so high he’d practically climbed the wall, and was currently huddled in the corner, pretty sure he was having a small heart attack.

“I WILL NOT be confined to a chair!” Zim sneered through plumes of smoldering chair smoke, “Zim can walk!

“Zzir, it’zz really bezzt if you-”

“ZIM CAN WALK!” he repeated, much louder than necessary, and took a cautious step forward to illustrate his point. He wavered a little, his legs still a bit too weak (and his body a bit too devoid of blood) to function. When two PAK legs unfurled, righting his balance, he placed hands at his sides and smiled smugly at the unfortunate Beezzorian.

“The doctor will not be happy,” she said.

“Irkens do not care about the opinions of inferior bee monsters,” his wrist flicked with a disdainful shooing motion. The nurse closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She looked like she desperately wanted to sting him.

“Very well, zzir. But pleazze be careful.”

“Zim is ALWAYS careful! I am an Elite! We are trained to be careful! DIB-THING!” he turned on heel and pointed, “where is my uniform? I will not go out in public in this horrible dress.”

“We have recovery clothing for you, zzir,” the nurse indicated folded squares of black clothing, set neatly on the bed. Zim didn’t even bother looking at them.

“My uniform!” he repeated.

“It was soaked in blood, Zim,” Dib sighed, already worn clean out from the ceaseless drama Zim tended to surround himself with, “I’m having it washed. Just wear the clothes they give you for now.”

“I REFUSE to-”

“It’s either that, the gown, or you go naked,” he said sternly. Zim shot him a look of pure acid, but he could tell that the Irken’s extravagant and unnecessary behavior had already expended most of his energy; his skin was pale, eyes shadowed, bandaged arms hanging limply at his sides. After another few seconds of ineffective glaring, he finally turned to the nurse.

“Fine. I will wear your...recovery clothing.”

“You’ll find them quite comfortable,” her thin smile didn’t reach her eyes, which were practically burning with enmity, a look that Dib recognized on pretty much everyone who worked in the service industry, human or otherwise. As she exited, Zim stuck his tongue out at her.

“You’re such a baby,” he snickered, and couldn’t help but watch as Zim unfastened the hospital gown and let it fall to his feet. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by Dib seeing him naked, which he found a little surprising, due to Zim’s tendency to guard his privacy like a rabid dog would guard a particularly meaty bone.

There was something alluring about it, the sight of him standing there, unabashed and unclothed in a pool of fabric. Though it would have been a lot _more_ alluring if he weren’t plastered in bandaging. Thick squares of it adhered to his scalp, his chest, covering the healing wounds there. Thin forearms were crisscrossed with gauze, and Dib was reminded of the old Mysterious Mysteries episode about the elusive ‘alien mummy’. 

Zim snatched a pair of leggings from the clothing pile, grunting as he grudgingly began pulling them on.

“Zim is no smeet, Dib-smell. I was in and out of the Academy before your great-grandparents were even conceived. If you had a brain in that disturbingly large head of yours, you would give me the respect I de-UFH!”

He lost his balance and tumbled onto the floor in a heap of flailing limbs. Dib heaved a sigh and crouched.

“Shut up. I’ll help you.”

“I don’t need-”

“Zim,” he said, setting his palms on Zim’s sharp kneecaps, “we’ve been traveling together for how long now? More than three months? And you’ve needed help from the very beginning. That’s why I’m here, remember? So let me help you.”

Zim stared back at him from between his knees, palms splayed flat on the floor behind him. Raspberry red eyes were set into a glare, but not a particularly angry one; it looked like apprehension more than anything. The gears in that green head were turning, his thoughts almost visible behind those pink-red lenses.

“...very well, then. I suppose you did come along to be my slave. It would be immoral of me not to utilize you.”

“Sometimes I really wonder what’s going on in that brain of yours, you know? Also, I’m still not your slave. Hold still.”

The leggings were made of an unfamiliar fabric that felt comfortable, cashmere-soft and spandex-stretchy, and with a little easing Dib managed to pull them all the way up, the waistband resting on Zim’s bony hips.

“Not so bad, right? Come on.”

He stood and held out his hand. Zim just looked at it, and probably would have continued just looking at it for another several minutes if Dib didn’t clear his throat. With a grumble, Zim slapped his hand into Dib’s and allowed himself to be hauled up.

Dib grabbed the shirt, made of the same material, and slipped it over Zim’s head. The garment was open-backed, leaving the PAK exposed for easy use. It was also sleeveless, cutting severely in toward the chest, deep enough to expose the thick white bandages adhered to the autopsy wound.

The circumference of his waist was exposed too, offering glimpses of green flesh.

 _Dear God_ , Dib thought, _it’s a fucking crop top._

He was _not_ sexually attracted to an alien bug in a crop top and leggings, was he?

Jesus Christ.

Maybe he really was insane. Or, at the least, very disturbed. 

“What now?” Zim asked miserably.

“Oh uh...well,” Dib coughed, trying to clear his mind of the troubling thoughts it held, racing like hamsters on a wheel, “now we can do whatever we want. You’ve got another appointment here midday tomorrow to reapply the salve-” he paused as Zim shuddered, “but until then-”

“We will go on our date,” Zim announced with his typical air of unearned confidence, and began marching unsteadily out of the room. Even the PAK legs, redeployed, looked like they were struggling, adjusting and readjusting to keep the wavering Irken on his feet.

“ _Or_...we could go to the room so you can rest and recover more blood. Which is...you know...kind of important.”

“Nonsense! My blood levels are quite adequate. I can just-”

One of the PAK legs seemed to just give up, flying out from underneath itself. Zim was thrown violently off-balance, crashing toward the floor. Dib, longer-limbed and more agile than most, dove down just in time to catch him.

Zim stared blearily up at him, body limp and head resting in Dib’s arms.

“I’m tired,” he said, almost conversationally, before he closed his eyes and was out again.


End file.
